What do professional facilitators look for in a venue?

A practical checklist for anyone booking a venue for a team offsite, workshop or conference.

Have you ever walked into a meeting or conference venue and felt your heart sink? 

I’ve had that feeling - both as a facilitator and a participant. I still cringe when I think about the two days spent facilitating 50 people in a windowless basement in Canary Wharf trying to ‘’think big’’ about strategy. More than once I’ve had to sit through dense presentations in a room with no AC or ventilation and the temperature meant everyone was half asleep. And I’ve been asked to run a hybrid meeting in a huge room with no projector, where the person dialing in got passed around on a laptop like a Christmas party game gone wrong. 

A good venue can make or break an event. Whether it’s a team offsite, a conference or a training day - a great venue does a lot of heavy lifting for you as the organiser. And a terrible venue - the ones with no windows, fluorescent lights and a "breakout space" that turns out to be a corridor by the fire exit - are very hard to recover from. 

When you’re booking venues day in and day out as your job (like me) your standards rocket and you start to notice all the tiny details that can make a huge difference at events. 

Here's what I look for when I'm choosing a venue. 

A venue that's genuinely accessible

Accessibility can cover a wide range of things. I start each event or workshop I run by asking for accessibility information from everyone who registers. I also have a long list of questions I ask each venue I book with - many of which are captured in this checklist. I also do quite a lot of work with venues to make sure that what they say they provide on their website or promo package is still accurate. I once showed up to a venue that said it had a working lift only to find it had been out of order for over a month, and two people couldn’t get into the room! 

Natural light

This one is non-negotiable for me. A room full of natural light changes the entire feel of a day. People think better in it and their energy holds up for longer.

I’m based in London, and two of my favourite venues have floor-to-ceiling windows and beautiful gardens to look onto: Lumen URC in King's Cross and Camley Street Natural Park - also in King’s Cross. These two also have great transport links - something else I don’t take for granted! 

Easy access to outdoor space and proper breakout areas

I often look for venues which have different types of space that can be used for breakout sessions: small sofas or chairs outside the main room I’ve booked, or courtyards or nearby parks that are easy to access. Keeping everyone in the same room all day drains energy - and the acoustics can be challenging if you have bigger groups. 

A flexible space 

I try VERY hard to avoid using rooms which have giant boardroom tables fixed to the floor. Part of running great events is being able to adapt the layout - sometimes multiple times in the same day. A flexible room means I can set up for small group clusters in the morning and reconfigure for a full circle after lunch. 

Can I put flip chart paper on the walls? Do the tables move, or are they fixed in rows facing a screen? These sound like small questions, but they decide whether I can shape the room around the work, or whether the work has to bend around the furniture. 

Tech that can actually run a hybrid session well

More and more of my away days now need to work for people dialling in as well as people in the room. Someone's train gets cancelled, or a colleague can't travel at the last minute, and suddenly you need a proper screen on the wall, decent speakers, and microphones that pick up the whole room rather than just whoever's closest.

This is the bit that catches people out. A lot of venues will tell you they're "hybrid ready" and then hand you a laptop balanced on a chair. I ask specific questions now, every time.

Somewhere with a purpose beyond profit

Where possible, I try to book venues that are social enterprises, charities, or part of an arts or cultural organisation. They're often better value, and sometimes come with an unexpected bonus. Earlier this year I ran an away day at the Migration Museum, and the group got a volunteer-led tour around the exhibitions as part of the day. That's not something a generic conference centre can offer.

Food that people actually want to eat

If I never see another stale, curling sandwich again, it'll be too soon. It takes a bit more effort to find local suppliers, but the food is almost always better, and it shows the group you've thought about their whole experience, not just the agenda.

Every time I get the food right, it comes up in the evaluation forms. Every single time. People remember good food far more than they remember a well-designed icebreaker.

Want more tips like these? 

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