Dealing With The Christmas Rush As An Event Manager

Chances are pretty good that if you’re employed in an events-related field, you’re already gearing up for Christmas (and if you aren’t, you should be).  The Christmas season is probably one of the busiest times of year for an event planner, with clients left and right putting in requests for festive parties and events. What that means from an event planning perspective is that you’re bound to be flooded with a veritable torrent of requests (if you aren’t already).

It also means that, if you haven’t nailed down a venue by now, you might not find one.

See, that’s the thing about Christmas – pretty much everyone wants to celebrate it.

It’s extremely rare to see a business that doesn’t host at least a small party for its employees, whether in the office or at a third-party venue. It’s thus important that you do your homework; make sure you have a list of vendors and venues that you can contact a moment’s notice, and keep yourself attuned to current trends in the events market.

In this case, according to several event management professionals in Calgary, there are three primary details you should be aware of. First and foremost, booking rates are at an all-time high. Second, clients are being incredibly conservative in their spending, taking care to ensure that every dollar is money well-spent. Lastly, customization’s huge – clients want something more unique than a turkey dinner or costume party, and something flashier, too.

“Clients are wanting to develop a signature drink that they can name something form their own company using infused syrups or something like that, or a specialty coffee drink,” Simply Elegant event planner Sharon Barwick told Canadian Business. “We’re noticing that a lot of companies want to focus on winter wonderland, magical décor, or they want to go with a glitzy Gatsby look; it’s gone very formal this year.”

Unfortunately, most of you have likely spotted one big problem with that state of affairs already – conservative spending doesn’t really fit so well with flashy and fancy events. All I can say here is that you’re going to have to stretch your creativity a bit. Consider convincing a client to host their party in the office, or see if you can’t strike up a deal with one of your vendors.

The Christmas season is one of the busiest times of year for event planners. It’s not terribly difficult to see why. Not everyone is going to want to attend a convention or a corporate summit…but everyone wants to spread at least a little Christmas cheer.

There’s one last piece of advice I can offer up before we wrap things up for the day. It comes from David Howard of The Event Group. According to Howard, the busiest day for corporate events is December 13. As such, you’ll likely have a much easier time booking something after that date; he also recommends that next year, you should probably start planning for Christmas early – in April.