5 tips to maximizing your bottom line when picking a venue

As meeting planners, your budget is your top priority – creating engaging, innovative and inspiring events for groups of all sizes becomes challenging, and doing it all with only a few dollars makes it even harder.

Now imagine if there was an easier solution to making your money go farther. Would you do it? Of course. That’s why we’re here to tell you our favorite tips from talented industry professionals on how to add a little room to your bottom line.

1. Look at venues that offer package pricing

Event package pricing is a great way to group all of the services you need from a venue into one per-person price that’s easy to understand and doesn’t give you nervous butterflies thinking about meeting catering minimums or other fees. Some venues, like Q Center in St. Charles, offer pre-built packages like the Complete Meeting Package to make planning your event easy, and your guests understand exactly what they’re getting in advance.

2. Search outside of city centers

The rule of thumb is that the closer you go to any downtown area, the more you’re going to pay for your event, especially if you are planning during peak season. Suburban locations just outside of cities typically offer a great price break and often have more flexible availability to help you accommodate different group sizes during peak season.

3. Always know your hidden fees

You never know what may come up during an event and it never hurts to be prepared. Always ask venues about any additional fees that may be occurred during your time there, such as room turnover fees, food and beverage service charges, local tax changes, and potential fee clauses hidden in your contract.

4. Ask about special offers or off-season pricing

As our moms all once said, “It never hurts to ask.” See what options your venue or vendors can offer in regards to discounts or specialty pricing. Many may offer seasonal specials or bundled pricing to help ease a little pressure off your event’s budget.

5. Seek locations with great in-house services

Having all of your services in-house at a venue is a great way to prevent specific vendor fees and set-up charges. When it comes to Q Center, we host nearly everything for you, including event production and print specialists, technology, registration, accommodations, and team building specialists to name a few. This helps you to cut down on planning and worrying about vendor coordination.

Now that you know how you can save, boost your bottom line and make all of these tips a reality with your next event at Q Center. With 95 tranquil acres along the Fox River in St. Charles, groups not only have a great meeting experience with more than 150,000 square feet of meeting and event options, but they can explore together through recreation and team-building activities, or simply rest their mind in one of the three on-site accommodation selections. Exclusively for MPI members, enjoy a special perk for booking your next 2019 – don’t wait, availability is running low.

About the author: Just west of Chicago, Q Center hosts 150,000+ square feet of versatile, IACC-certified meeting and event space on 95 acres to create an experience that’s immersive, transformative and innovative for groups of all needs. On top of our accomplished meeting and events staff, Q Center features an expert in-house event production team, an on-site professional printing service, and recreation specialists offering a full range of team building options scalable to any group size or budget. For more information, call (630) 377-3100 or visit QCenter