How to Write a Venue Brief That Gets You Better Results

• A detailed, honest venue brief is the single most effective thing you can do to accelerate your venue search.
• Budget is the section most clients get wrong – vagueness wastes time for everyone. Frame it honestly and your agency can do far better work.
• AV, catering, and accessibility requirements are often left off a brief and added later, which can disqualify venues that looked perfect on paper.
• When working with a venue finding agency, your brief is the starting point for a conversation – not a fixed specification.
• A brief takes 30 minutes to write properly. It saves days of back-and-forth and weeks of wasted shortlisting.

Most people treat the venue brief as a formality – a box to tick before getting to the interesting part. In reality, the brief is where most venue searches go wrong or right.

A vague brief produces vague results. If you write ‘central London, 200 people, November’, you will receive a long list of venues that technically satisfy those criteria but have nothing to do with your actual event. Your agency or venue contact will spend their time guessing at what you really need, and you will spend your time reviewing options that were never right.

A strong brief does the opposite. It narrows the field to venues that are genuinely appropriate, surfaces options you would not have found independently, and makes negotiation faster because the venue understands what you need.

If you are working with a venue finding agency, a good brief has an additional benefit: it helps us do our best work. Make Events’s venue team works with a nationwide and international portfolio of venues, and the better we understand your event, the better the options we can surface.

1. Event Type and Format

Start with what kind of event this is, and how it will run. These are not the same thing.

• Event type: Conference, away day, awards ceremony, product launch, annual dinner, team building, board meeting, exhibition. This sets the context immediately.
• Format: Keynote-only with breakouts, plenary plus exhibition floor, dinner-and-awards, workshop-based, hybrid. Format determines physical requirements far more specifically than event type alone.
• Programme outline: A rough agenda helps enormously. Venues that work well for a morning keynote and afternoon breakouts are different from those suited to a sit-down dinner following a networking reception. You do not need a timed running order at brief stage, but knowing the broad shape of the day matters.

Budget is the section most clients either omit entirely or frame so vaguely as to be useless. ‘Our budget is flexible’ or ‘we are looking for something cost-effective’ tells your agency nothing. The result is a shortlist of venues that may be significantly over or under your actual number.

Make Events’s venue finding service is entirely free to clients – we are funded by the venues, not by you. This means there is genuinely no reason to hold back your budget. Knowing it does not cost you more; it gets you better results.

How to frame your budget clearly:

• Venue hire only, or all-in? A venue hire budget of £5,000 and an all-in budget of £5,000 are very different things. Be explicit about whether your figure includes catering, AV, and accommodation.
• Per head or total? A total budget of £30,000 for 200 delegates is a very different brief from a per-head budget of £150 for 200 delegates, even though both produce the same number.
• Stretch budget vs target? If you have a target of £25,000 but a board-approved maximum of £30,000, saying so is useful. Your agency can lead with target-range options and flag one or two aspirational options within the stretch budget.
• What is not budgeted? If speaker fees, entertainment, or photography are handled separately, flag it so they are not factored into venue cost estimates.

6. AV, Technical, and Production Requirements

This is the section most often added too late, resulting in venues that look perfect on paper but cannot support the technical requirements of the event.

If your event is being managed by an event production company alongside a venue finding agency, make sure both have the same technical requirements. Misalignment here causes problems.

Give your venue finding team enough detail to assess whether a venue’s in-house catering can meet your needs or whether an external caterer will be required.

• Type and format: arrival drinks and canapes, seated dinner, hot or cold buffet, BBQ, street food stations, standing reception
• Dietary requirements: estimate the proportion with dietary needs. High proportions of specific requirements (vegan, halal, kosher, severe allergies) need explicit checking
• Alcohol: open bar, drinks packages, or dry event? Some venues have licence restrictions that affect this
• External caterers: if you work with a preferred caterer, state this early. Some venues have exclusive arrangements that prevent external caterers

8. Accessibility Requirements

Accessibility requirements must be stated in the brief, not discovered during a site visit. Step-free access, accessible toilets, hearing loops, parking for delegates with mobility needs, and accommodating wheelchair users at all event spaces are things that can rule a venue in or out before a single visit is made. If you know of specific accessibility requirements among your delegate group, share them.

9. Brand, Style, and Tone

This is the brief section that transforms a shortlist from ‘technically suitable’ to ‘genuinely right’. Venues have personalities as much as events do.

• Formal or informal atmosphere?
• Traditional, heritage, or contemporary aesthetic?
• Prestigious or approachable? Some brands deliberately avoid white-tablecloth formality.
• Outdoor space required or preferred?
• Unusual or distinctive venue that makes a statement, or a reliable professional space that does not distract?

If there are clients or senior stakeholders attending whose expectations need to be managed, say so. The bar for ‘impressive’ is different for a graduate induction event and a client advisory board.

When you submit a brief to Make Events’s venue finding team, it becomes the foundation of a structured process: sourcing, shortlisting, negotiation, and booking, all handled on your behalf and at no cost.

1. Your dedicated account manager reviews the brief and comes back with clarifying questions within one working day. A good brief means fewer questions and a faster turnaround.
2. The team sources venues against your criteria from our national and international portfolio. We know which venues have permanent LED walls and which rely on hired-in kit. We know which have exclusive catering arrangements. We know which have genuine accessibility credentials and which have gaps their marketing materials do not mention.
3. We negotiate on your behalf. Because of our relationships and buying volume, we regularly secure rates and inclusions that are not available to organisations going direct.
4. We arrange and accompany site visits to your shortlisted venues, providing expert guidance at each one.
5. We manage the contract and booking process through to confirmation.

How long should a venue brief be?
Long enough to cover all the essential information, short enough to be usable. A brief does not need to be a formal document – it can be a completed template, a detailed email, or a structured summary. What matters is that it covers event type, format, dates, delegate numbers, location, budget, AV and catering requirements, accessibility, and the style or tone you are after. Most good venue briefs are one to two pages.

Do I need a brief if I am using a venue finding agency?
Yes, and especially so. A venue finding agency like Make Events can do far better work with a strong brief than with a vague one. The brief is the starting point of everything we do on your behalf. We also ask clarifying questions at the start of the search, so even an imperfect brief can be built on in conversation.

How do I know what budget to put in my brief?
Start with whatever budget you genuinely have available, not an aspirational lower figure. A venue finding agency is funded by the venue, not by you, so there is no advantage in understating your budget – it just means you receive less suitable options.

Can I update my brief after I have submitted it?
Yes, and please do. Event requirements evolve, and it is far better to update the brief than to let the search continue against outdated parameters. Let your Make Events account manager know as soon as possible if anything changes.

What happens to my brief when it reaches Make Events?
Your brief goes directly to a dedicated account manager who reviews it and comes back to you within one working day. We then source venues from our national and international portfolio, negotiate on your behalf, present a targeted shortlist, accompany site visits, and manage the booking process through to contract. The whole service is free to you.