Site visits: the 25 questions

Walk a venue with the tour checklist. Learn what to photograph, what to measure, and which answers change the budget.

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Site visits: the 25 questions.

Walk a venue with the tour checklist.

Learn what to photograph, what to measure, and which answers change the budget.

What a site visit is for.

A site visit is not a sales tour.

The venue's coordinator will walk you through the room with the lights at their best and tell you the story of the last wedding.

The 25 questions.

Ask every one, every time, even at venues you know.

Staff change; policies change more often.

What to photograph.

Photograph for planning, not for the mood board.

You need, in this order: the room from each corner at eye level; the ceiling, straight up, from the centre and from under any obstruction; every wall where décor or a stage might sit; the doors, with the door open and a person standing in it for scale; the loading dock and the freight elevator interior; the route from the front door to the room, every turn; the washrooms; the power panel and any floor pockets; the posted occupant load sign; and anything ugly you will need to hide.

What to measure.

Venue floor plans are often wrong by half a metre, which is enough to lose a table.

Measure the room's length and width yourself.

Scoring venues consistently.

Score each venue the same afternoon, before memory fades.

Use the same ten criteria for every venue, weight them before the tours, and score 1 to 5.

That is the lesson. The worksheet and the quiz are just below this video.

What you will be able to do

• Run a site visit with the checklist
• Photograph and measure what matters
• Score venues consistently

What a site visit is for

A site visit is not a sales tour. The venue’s coordinator will walk you through the room with the lights at their best and tell you the story of the last wedding. Let them. Then take the room back and work through your own list. Your job on the walk-through is to leave with answers that change the budget, photographs that let you plan from your desk, and measurements the floor plan will rely on.

Allow 60 to 90 minutes. Bring a laser measure, a phone with a full battery, the printed venue tour checklist and, if you can, the client. A client who has walked the room argues less about the floor plan later.

The 25 questions

Ask every one, every time, even at venues you know. Staff change; policies change more often.

Questions 2, 10, 15, 20 and 23 change the budget. Write their answers down word for word and have the coordinator confirm them by email that day.

What to photograph

Photograph for planning, not for the mood board. You need, in this order: the room from each corner at eye level; the ceiling, straight up, from the centre and from under any obstruction; every wall where décor or a stage might sit; the doors, with the door open and a person standing in it for scale; the loading dock and the freight elevator interior; the route from the front door to the room, every turn; the washrooms; the power panel and any floor pockets; the posted occupant load sign; and anything ugly you will need to hide. Take a short video walking the guest route from the street to the room so you can time it later.

What to measure

Venue floor plans are often wrong by half a metre, which is enough to lose a table. Measure the room’s length and width yourself. Then measure the distance from each pillar to the nearest wall, the clear height under the lowest obstruction, the width and height of the main doors and the freight elevator, the depth of any alcove you plan to use for a bar, and the distance from the dock to the room along the real route. Write the numbers on the printed floor plan while you stand there.

Scoring venues consistently

Score each venue the same afternoon, before memory fades. Use the same ten criteria for every venue, weight them before the tours, and score 1 to 5. Do not change the weights after you have seen a venue you like. The weighted sheet is covered in the module workshop; for now the discipline is simple: same questions, same photographs, same measurements, same score sheet, same day.

Worked example: the Harbour Gala

We toured three downtown hotels for the gala. At the one the committee preferred, question 1 gave us 420 m² and a 4.9 m ceiling, confirmed with the laser at 4.88 m under the chandeliers. Question 3 found two pillars on the north wall, 0.6 m square, which the floor plan on the website did not show. That killed the idea of a north-wall stage; the stage moved to the east wall and the pillars became bar positions.

Question 6 mattered because the committee had asked about an aerialist: the hotel had no rated rigging points and no engineer’s letter, so the aerialist left the program and the mentalist took the slot. Question 10 gave us the $18,000 food and beverage minimum, the 18 percent service charge, and the honest answer that roughly three-quarters of the charge goes to banquet staff. Question 20 confirmed exclusive in-house AV with a patch fee for outside suppliers, which pushed us toward the in-house package for the paddle raise screens.

Question 25 gave an overtime rate that starts at midnight, so the program ends at 10:30 and strike runs to 11:30 without penalty. Total time on site: 75 minutes. Total budget changes from the visit: the stage position, the AV decision and the loss of the aerialist, worth roughly $3,000 of the entertainment line.

Common mistakes

• Touring without the printed list and relying on the coordinator to volunteer the bad news. They will not.
• Photographing the chandeliers and not the pillars.
• Accepting the website floor plan instead of measuring.
• Letting the client fall in love before the budget filter has been applied.
• Forgetting to walk the accessible route yourself. A venue’s “fully accessible” often means “there is an elevator somewhere”.
• Not confirming answers by email the same day. Six months later, the coordinator has changed and so has the overtime rate.

Worksheet

Download the worksheet, complete it for your own event (or the running gala example), and keep it in your course binder. It takes about 15 minutes.

Download the worksheet (PDF)