How Educational Institutions Can Streamline Venue Bookings and Event Operations to Improve Utilisation, Collaboration, and Revenue
Aside from academic scheduling, private schools, colleges and other educational facilities generate substantial revenue by hosting on-campus events that leverage their existing resources and benefit both the institution, its alumni and the surrounding community.
With the right strategies and tools, educational institutions can improve their current booking processes and optimize event operations to drive more revenue and increase occupancy while encouraging interdepartmental collaboration, eliminating booking conflicts and reducing workload for their event and facilities staff.
In this guide to educational event management, we will:
• Explore the common venue and event management goals shared by leading private schools and educational facilities.
• Outline strategies to automate venue booking processes and event operations.
• Share opportunities to enhance school events.
What Is Educational Event Management?
Educational event management refers to the planning, scheduling, coordination, and reporting of events that take place within schools, colleges, and universities. These events may include assemblies, performances, alumni gatherings, sporting events, conferences, and facility rentals.
By digitising event workflows and centralising venue bookings, institutions can improve operational efficiency while creating better experiences for students, staff, and community members.
Modern educational institutions increasingly rely on event management software platforms to coordinate these activities across departments and campus facilities.
8 Common Venue and Event Management Goals Shared by Leading Private Schools and Educational Facilities
1. Streamline Event Operations to Enhance Event Experiences
Schools, colleges, and other educational facilities are streamlining event operations to deliver better event experiences for students, staff, external stakeholders, alumni, and the general public. By optimising event processes, these institutions can create seamless and memorable event experiences while simultaneously reducing the administrative burden on their event and facilities teams.
2. Improve Visibility to Encourage Collaboration
Improving interdepartmental collaboration within schools and educational facilities is crucial for reducing venue booking conflicts and enhancing event delivery. When different departments and stakeholders work in silos, it often leads to scheduling conflicts, inefficient resource utilisation, and miscommunication. Private schools are focusing on centralising information, increasing visibility, and establishing clear communication channels to ensure all departments can seamlessly coordinate their events and venue bookings and utilise shared resources.
3. Increase Efficiency and Productivity
Educational institutions often face the challenge of having limited staff available to manage large volumes of venue bookings and events across multiple on-campus facilities. In such resource-constrained environments, improving efficiency has become crucial to ensure smooth operations and optimal utilisation of available resources. By simplifying processes, automating tasks, and implementing efficient systems, educational institutions can bridge the staffing gap and achieve more with their existing workforce.
4. Grow Event Revenue by Increasing External Event Bookings
Streamlining venue booking processes is crucial for private schools and colleges to encourage external stakeholders and alumni to book events at their campus facilities and increase revenue generated from such events. By creating a seamless and user-friendly booking experience, educational institutions attract a wider range of event organisers and create a favorable impression that fosters repeat bookings and positive word-of-mouth recommendations.
5. Make Informed Business Decisions with Greater Event Insights
All event businesses require detailed event reporting and analytics to gain greater insight and make informed business decisions. By leveraging comprehensive event data, educational institutions can assess the success of their events and identify areas for improvement. This data-driven approach enables them to allocate budget effectively for marketing and promotions, prioritise expenses like renovations, and make informed purchasing decisions for equipment, such as audio-visual technology.
6. Create a Fully Integrated Technology Ecosystem
Leading private schools and colleges are creating fully integrated technology ecosystems connect scheduling systems, student information systems, and venue management software. A comprehensive and integrated technology ecosystem allows for seamless data flow and synchronisation between different systems and processes, ensuring accuracy, consistency, and reliability of information.
7. Maintain a Safe and Secure Environment to Minimise Risk at OnCampus Events
Now more than ever, educational institutions recognise the importance of safety and security and are taking proactive measures to identify, assess, and mitigate potential risks associated with on-campus events. By prioritising risk management, these institutions demonstrate their commitment to providing a secure environment that fosters learning, collaboration, and community engagement.
8. Facilitate Inclusive and Accessible Event Experiences to Nurture a Positive School Community Culture
Events play a vital role in nurturing inclusive communities. So, leading private schools are committed to delivering busy events that provide opportunities for students, staff, and the wider community to come together, connect, and engage in shared experiences to promote a sense of belonging and celebrate diversity.
Why Schools Are Investing in Educational Event Management Technology
Many institutions are transitioning from spreadsheets and manual coordination to digital solutions that support campus-wide scheduling and reporting.
Educational event management technology helps schools:
- Centralize venue bookings
- Automate approvals and workflows
- Improve communication across departments
- Track event performance and utilisation
- Reduce administrative workload
As demand for campus events grows, having a scalable system becomes essential for long-term operational success.
9 Strategies to Improve Educational Event Management and Venue Booking Operations
1. Implement a Centralised Platform
Disconnected manual processes like spreadsheets and individual calendars reduce productivity and often lead to confusion and conflicts due to the lack of visibility. A centralised venue and event management platform serves as a single source of truth so that you and your stakeholders can access live booking data and critical event booking information.
2. Improve Visibility and Increase Occupancy with Live Venue Availability
By implementing a live calendar that highlights existing bookings, you can prevent booking conflicts to deliver better event experiences. Furthermore, real-time availability allows your staff, students, alumni and other external event organisers to identify vacant spaces that can be booked for upcoming events which helps to maximise venue occupancy.
3. Implement Self-Service Booking Tools
Utilising self-service online booking solutions encourages your staff, stakeholders and alumni to make and manage their own bookings and reduce dependence on event staff. By implementing user-friendly and accessible online booking platforms, you can enhance your venue and event booking processes, improve efficiency, and foster a culture of self-sufficiency.
4. Automated Workflows and Communications
Automation is the key to leveraging human business intelligence by transforming your staff’s standard processes into pre-programmed workflows. Instead of relying on your team to remember when to complete a certain task, utilise technologies to create customised workflows and communication templates that trigger actions like tasks, emails and reports based on your chosen settings (I.e., due dates and system status changes etc.) so that you can rest assured your team will never miss a critical step in the event management process.
5. Manage Resources with Quantity-Controlled Inventory Tracking
Implementing quantity-controlled inventory tracking tools helps you to optimise the utilisation of resources such as audio-visual technology, furniture, and event equipment. By allocating available quantities for inventory items, items cannot be overbooked or double-booked, which reduces the risk of booking conflicts and ensures successful event delivery. Furthermore, you can quantify the return on investment to make informed decisions about your inventory management and strategically plan for future capital expenditure.
6. Plan Menus and Manage Rising Food Costs with Catering Management Tools
Catering management tools are essential to assist private schools with seasonal menu planning, accommodating dietary requirements, and managing rising food and beverage costs. These purpose-built tools allow you to customize catering items with menu descriptions and other essential details like unit costs, dietary notes, discounts and special rates. In doing so, you can access real-time profit and loss analysis and reports that provide in-depth insights into catering sales, helping identify trends and opportunities for future menu planning and upselling.
7. Gain Critical Business Insights with Advanced Reporting and Custom Dashboards
Private schools and educational institutions need advanced reporting tools to gain critical business insights and make informed decisions. By adopting a robust venue and event management platform with advanced reporting capabilities, you can easily collate and filter relevant event data to produce tailored report layouts and customised dashboards to meet your institution’s needs. Furthermore, by automating scheduled reports to be sent via email or Files Transfer Protocol (FTP), you can save time and ensure all up-to-date information is shared at regular intervals.
8. Build a Robust Technology Ecosystem Using API and Integrations
Gone are the days of seeking one system or vendor to solve all the technical requirements across your institution. Now, leading private schools and colleges seek best-of-breed solutions to support specific needs (I.e., academic scheduling software, student information systems, venue and event management platforms, floor planning tools, event registration solutions etc.) and build an integrated technology ecosystem to improve data integrity, ensure reliable reporting and provide staff and stakeholders with accurate information to reduce miscommunication and encourage greater collaboration.
9. Ensure the Safety of Staff, Students and Alumni with a Purpose-Built Event Risk Management Platform
Sadly, in recent years, schools and universities globally have become primary targets for violence and other threats. As a result, event risk management has become a priority for event operators who need to identify, assess and control foreseeable risks that could impact the attendees, suppliers, staff, venue or the success of the event in general. To ensure safety at all of your upcoming events, implement a detailed risk management plan supported by purpose-built event risk assessment software.
Take Your Venue and Event Processes from F to A+
Innovative technologies are available today to help your school meet its current and future challenges. Using a centralized educational event management platform can simplify campus event coordination to increase revenue, reduce cost, boost productivity, improve efficiency, and ensure long-term profitability.
If you need support, contact us today to discover how Momentus can help you streamline your venue and event management workflows to maximise profit and increase utilisation at your school.
About Momentus
Momentus Technologies is a global provider of industry leading venue and event management solutions that empower organisations to create extraordinary moments. With over 60,000 users in more than 50 countries, Momentus serves the needs of convention and exhibition centres, education institutions, corporate, stadiums and arenas, and arts and culture centres. Its powerful intuitive platform alongside intelligent data-driven solutions and unparalleled expertise provides customers a view of past, present and future event operations to increase end-to-end visibility, optimize efficiency and achieve business goals. Founded in 1985, Momentus is headquartered in the United States. The company’s employees work across the globe in Momentus offices and remotely. To learn more, visit gomomentus.com.
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