Today's Venue and Event Management Challenges

The past decade has seen the events landscape change in a number of ways across all industry sectors. Concerts are bigger and more popular than ever in the wake of the pandemic, corporate businesses are prioritizing employee engagement by way of events, universities are finding new ways to rent out spaces and drive funding and so on.  

With virtually every industry involved in events undergoing changes, it should come as no surprise that many of today’s venue and event management challenges are relatively new. 

The pandemic wasn’t easy for anyone or any industry, and events are no exception. From staffing to budgeting to a resurgence in demand for in-person events, event managers are facing unprecedented challenges. 

Fortunately, you can overcome these challenges with the right prep work and the right event and venue management platform. 

“No matter what niche you’re in, events are experiencing so much growth and change right now. Planners hosting corporate events are increasingly focused on engagement, those spearheading concerts want analytics on how often songs are performed, venue managers want more in-depth analytics on room usage and so on. There’s never been so much change, nor so many emergent challenges, in the event space.” — Steve Mackenzie, Chief Innovation Officer at Momentus 

7 biggest venue and event management challenges

The number of new venue and event management challenges is always growing and shifting. Depending on your industry and region, you could have your own unique challenges as well. But there are still a number of common venue and event management challenges you can prepare for now. 

1. Staffing Challenges

During the coronavirus pandemic, many events departments had to shut down. In-person events around the world were universally on hold, leaving the events industry in a rough spot.  

As a result of these shutdowns, it wasn’t uncommon for seasoned events specialists to retire early. This not only led to headcount shortages, but also resulted in a loss of irreplaceable knowledge in many organizations. 

The industry lost a lot of historical knowledge and experience in the events space because of the pandemic. For example, in Vegas there were  people who spent their entire career as a banquet server, but decided to retire early. Now you have entire departments starting from scratch, increased training demands and costs and event managers bowing out from all the stress.

Overcoming this challenge: Staffing is a multifaceted issue, so there are multiple tactics you can apply. 

• Work on improving your company culture and then promote it on your site and in job postings. This can have a dramatic impact on your ability to hire and retain employees, with 90% of professionals saying they research culture before accepting an offer. 
• Cross-train your employees to ensure everyone in your events functions knows how to handle one another’s roles. This makes it easier to cover sick time, allows for more upward mobility and can help keep your team engaged. 
• Leverage event and venue management software to streamline processes. With fewer hands and more work, minimizing inefficiencies is key. The right software can break down siloes, increase margins and reduce time spent on common event management tasks. 
  
  

Above: The right event management software can drastically reduce the time spent on various tasks.

Staffing challenges take time to fix, but software can bring relief to current employees quickly. Coupled with cross-training and cultural improvements and you can be well on your way to having an efficient event department. 

2. Increasing software demands

As touched on earlier, no matter what industry you’re in, software needs to handle more than before — deeper insights on event performance, ways to track utilization on rooms, tools for driving engagement, cross-departmental communication tools and more. 

Insufficient staffing, tighter budgets and increasing event complexity are also driving a universal need for better event and venue management software. Much like dated manual processes of yesteryear, a lot of software options out there are also getting outpaced by the speed of growth in events. 

Overcoming this challenge: The right event and venue management software makes all the difference. There are some vendors that are tailored to fit a specific industry or handle only a small portion of event management.  

While finding the right venue management software is an in-depth process, there are a few quick tips to keep in mind: 

• Don’t piecemeal your solution. Find a platform that streamlines all the event processes you’re struggling with. 
• Look for a vendor with experience in your industry or niche, as this can help them provide better support and a tailored product. 
• Run a credibility check and see if the vendor has positive reviews and a strong reputation. 
  

Read our blog on finding the right venue and event management software to ensure you make the right choice for your unique organization. 

3. More focus on sustainability

Over the past decades, sustainability has become an increasing focus for many industries. Electric vehicles are taking off in the automotive industry, manufacturing businesses are utilizing solar and so on. Events are an area where companies are looking to become more sustainable too. 

• 83% of event specialists are now including sustainability as a core concern when planning events.
  
• 77% of consumers factor in sustainability when deciding to go with a brand. 

Delivering sustainable events is easier said than done. Event planners typically aren't prepared to formally launch sustainability initiatives, let alone how to measure progress and deliver consistent results.

Overcoming this challenge: There’s no getting around the complexity of events and the number of areas where sustainability-minded decisions can have an impact. However, there are steps you can take to start delivering more sustainable events this year and beyond. 

• Develop a plan to break down sustainability efforts into categories so you can more easily focus your efforts and tracking. 
• Don’t neglect the role of Corporate Social Responsibility and DEI efforts in sustainability. 
• Audit your own internal processes and departments to make positive changes that better life for your employees. This can deliver a more engaging experience for employees and help your organization’s reputation as a responsible employer. 
• Leverage sustainability software to streamline your tracking efforts and deliver tangible results that show your audience your commitment. 

Sustainability is only going to grow in importance. Taking the right steps now can set your organization up for a healthier, more sustainable future. Read our e-book on sustainable events to ensure you leave no green stone unturned.

4. Pivoting back to in-person events

During the pandemic, events departments everywhere had to scramble and figure out how to host virtual events. Now, the focus is largely shifting back to in-person events. 

This quick pivot back to in-person events wouldn’t normally cause issues for event departments, but with many seasoned events specialists retiring during the pandemic this shift is more difficult than it should be. 

Overcoming this challenge: There’s a solid chance your events team isn’t fully staffed nor as experienced as it was even a few years back. Fortunately, the same tips that can help with your staffing challenges can largely make a difference here. 

• Prioritize cross-training your existing staff, allowing your team to tag in and help with more tasks as they arise.  
• Utilize event and venue management software to make events more manageable for any team size and level of expertise. 
• If you have any experienced employees, give them a chance to shine. Set aside time for them to document processes and make life easier for less-experienced employees. 

Lastly, by focusing on the employee experience, you can not only make your organization more attractive to prospective employees, but also make your current events team more efficient overall. 

5. Rising safety concerns for live events

As events largely pivot back to an in-person format, there’s a growing focus on mitigating risks and safety concerns. This is for a number of reasons. 

• Increasing gun violence. 
• Increased frequency of crowd crush events: Astroworld in Houston, halloween in Seoul and Asake concert in London. 
• Data breaches are more expensive than ever before, with the average data breach costing $4.35 million. 

Every person that attends one of your events is trusting you to keep them safe. And whether you’re hosting in-person events, hybrid or strictly virtual, your attendees are trusting you to keep their data safe the moment they book or register for your event.  

Overcoming this challenge: Safety and risk management for events is a nuanced issue requiring a multi-faceted approach. 

• Run an event risk management assessment to identify potential risks and start coming up with solutions. 
• Follow ISO 31000:2018 Risk Management Guidelines to ensure you’re utilizing risk management best practices. 
• Simplify your efforts with event risk management software tailored to events. 

Too often organizations wait until disaster strikes before taking risk management seriously. With the above steps, you can minimize your chances of disaster and deliver memorable — and safe — events. 

6. Event roles are more complex

Several factors have led to increasingly complex roles for event specialists: 

• Vacancies in event departments have led to current staffing carrying more burden. 
• As events grow in complexity and size, the work needed to make them happen has increased and placed more on the plates of event specialists. 
• Tighter budgets make it more important to do more with less. This translates to more focus on analytics and reporting, which often falls on those in events department.

Overcoming this challenge: Much like other challenges facing events, the methods used to help tackle increasingly-complex event roles also help with other matters. 

Cross-training employees will help improve operational efficiency and increase team collaboration. And as employees discover better ways to handle certain processes, they can share this knowledge and make everyone’s lives easier. 

Venue and event management software will also help with more complex roles. With the right platform, you can reduce the time your team spends on various tasks, foster communication between departments and ultimately streamline events as a whole. 

7. Desire to consolidate tech stack

With departments and budgets shrinking, what was once a passable tech stack can now feel unwieldy. But with the current events landscape requiring more efficiency and insights, reducing your tech stack isn’t as simple as cutting software, as this can result in the loss of critical functionality. 

Overcoming this challenge: As various event management solutions have launched in the past several years, it’s been easy for departments to pick up individual tools to solve a particular challenge. Now, consolidation of your tech stack is more feasible than ever. 

• Create a checklist of must-have functionality, security requirements and any other organization-specific requirements. 
• Audit your existing event tech stack and look for overlap between tools, as well as tools providing functionality you no longer need. 
• Flag tools you no longer need or those no longer meeting any of your additional criteria (security, operating system requirements, etc,). 

Lastly, consider simplifying your tech stack with a single event and venue management platform.  

An events management platform for today’s landscape

Momentus delivers a true, end-to-end venue and events management platform that’s built for today’s challenges and beyond. Our platform is capable of helping you streamline events, regardless of industry, with: 

• Online event booking 
• Event calendar 
• Dashboards with analytics and insights 
• CRM, email templates and contract agreement management 
• Room diagramming, equipment inventory and work orders 
• Sustainability and risk management tools 
• And more 

With the Momentus Platform, you can counter today’s challenges, simplify your tech stack and future-proof your events department. Sign up for a free demo and  learn firsthand how we can help your organization today.