Choosing where to hold an event means more than finding a hall that's big enough. It is a process with its own name, site selection, with many criteria to balance at once, and for big exhibitions it can start years before opening day.
What site selection is
Site selection is the process of choosing where to hold an event, including both the city or destination and the specific facility. At this stage the organizer doesn't need to worry about exactly where each activity will go inside the hall. The focus is on whether the venue has viable options and whether the overall layout suits the planned exhibition program.
Lead times differ between associations and companies
Many exhibitions are planned years ahead. Associations tend to choose a venue about 10 years before the actual event date, while companies usually need at least a year to prepare. Given such long timelines, organizers often need at least one more site inspection trip after signing with a specific facility, as the event date gets closer.
Factors to weigh when building a site selection process
Beyond ordinary logistics, several additional factors are usually assessed when building a venue selection process:
- Political matters that may require rotating the venue between editions
- Financial factors, since some venues attract far more visitors than others
- Marketing, the geographic location and demographics of the surrounding market
- Competition from other events held at the same time
- The system of hotels, restaurants and attractions, and access to transport
The role of the RFP in venue selection
A Request for Proposal (RFP) is a document that states the services the organizer wants from outside contractors or venues, with a request for quotes so multiple proposals can be compared. An RFP can also be done electronically (ERFP). Information about previous exhibitions is very useful when building the RFP, as well as when preparing for the site inspection trip.
Responses to an RFP usually contain detailed information on the venue's capabilities, focusing on infrastructure and the building's architectural features, along with marketing materials such as photos and virtual tours.
Venue choice is a strategic step
Site selection affects almost every later decision, from ticket prices and the travel costs of international visitors to the ability to compete in attracting exhibitors. So the organizer should treat it as a strategic step and not an administrative one. A cheap venue with poor transport access can end up costing more in real terms (counting the opportunity cost of lost visitors) than a pricier but more convenient one.
Putting it together: a complete set of exhibition venue selection criteria
Taken as a whole, exhibition venue selection criteria should be built into a weighted list, instead of judging each venue by feel in a scattered way. A practical approach is to score each venue on each group of criteria (physical infrastructure: area, ceiling, columns, loading dock; accessibility: airport, hotels, city traffic; market factors: demographics, competition at the same time; and financial factors: rent, negotiability, the economic impact the venue is expected to bring) then add them into one total score for an objective comparison between options.
Update the criteria after each venue change
This set of criteria shouldn't be fixed forever. After each event at a new venue, the organizer should record what the original criteria missed, for example underestimating the travel time from the airport or not counting the cost of long-distance equipment transport, and add it to the criteria used for the next venue selection, making the process closer to operating reality each time.