Plan a conference venue

A conference room’s headline capacity is often the larger of a seated and a standing number. Theatre style holds more people than a cabaret table. Ask which layout the number refers to before you decide the room fits the programme.

Updated 25 October 2026

Timeline

As soon as the date is real
A date everyone can attend is harder than a room. Enquire once the date is held by the people who have to be there, and say if it can still move by a week.
Three months out, or sooner if the date is close
Ask several rooms the same layout question. A hotel conference room and a hall are different answers even at the same capacity.
Six weeks out
Choose from totals that include AV, not from the room hire alone. Walk the step-free route, don’t just read that one exists.
A month out
Confirm the layout, the bump-in time and the name on the invoice. Eventier does not sell tickets or print name badges.
The week before
Send final numbers for catering. Test the slides on the venue’s machine if you can, or bring your own and the cable they named.

Checklist

  1. Programme: plenary, breakouts, or one room all day. Each extra room is its own quote.
  2. Layout: theatre, classroom, boardroom or cabaret, and the capacity in that layout.
  3. AV: screen, microphones, a clicker, hearing loop, and who presses play.
  4. Registration: a table, power, and a place that isn’t blocking the accessible entrance.
  5. Catering for the hours you are actually there, including a dietary count.
  6. Step-free access, accessible toilet, and a quiet room if you need one.
  7. Bump-in and bump-out times. If they are outside the day rate, they are part of the total.
  8. The invoice name, GST, and the deposit schedule.

Budget

Day hire plus tea-and-coffee plus a per-head lunch is the usual stack, and it is easy to compare only the day hire. Put every line in the total, then divide by the number of people you expect in the room, not the number on the mailing list. A minimum spend written for a gala dinner does not describe a daytime conference: ask them to restate it.

In Perth, Eventier’s catalogue on 25 October 2026 has 807 rooms with an email whose published capacity falls between 30 and 300. 270 of those publish a price on the venue’s own site. That is a count of rooms, not a typical price, and it is not a national figure. The Perth page for this occasion records the capacity rule and the Overture Maps attribution.

Ask every venue which of the three you are being quoted, then put the same guest count through each answer. The cost per head calculator does that arithmetic in the browser. how to compare venue quotes is the same method written out.

What to ask every venue

  1. Which layout does your capacity refer to, and can you do our layout on our date?
  2. What is the total for that day and that layout: room hire, a minimum spend, or per head? Is GST included?
  3. What AV is in the room, what do you charge to run it, and is there a hearing loop?
  4. Is there step-free access from the street to the room and to an accessible toilet?
  5. When can we bump in, and is there a loading point that isn’t the guest entrance?

Save exhibitor stands, recording and overflow rooms for the venues that survive those five. questions to ask a venue is the longer list.

What Eventier will and won’t do

Eventier finds rooms, writes the enquiry, and sends it only after you approve it. It sends up to two follow-ups if a venue goes quiet, and lines the quotes up side by side. It never signs, books or pays. Finding venues and writing the emails are free. Sending them takes an Event Pass (A$11.99) or Eventier Pro (A$39.99 a year).

Eventier does not sell tickets, run registration or book accommodation. The quote it compares is the venue’s.

Place leads come from Overture Maps Places (Overture Maps Foundation). That theme includes data from Meta, Microsoft, PinMeTo, Krick, RenderSEO, DAC, BrightQuery, Birdeye, Uberall and the OpenTravel Alliance under the CDLA Permissive 2.0 licence, Foursquare data under the Apache Licence 2.0, and AllThePlaces under CC0. These pages do not republish those records. Counts are rooms Eventier read from venues’ own websites, on 25 October 2026.