Choosing an event venue in Singapore: the room has a job

A venue shortlist almost always arrives as photographs. Wide room, warm light, tables dressed, a chandelier doing most of the work. Every option looks like somewhere you would happily spend an evening.

The trouble is that photographs answer a question nobody was stuck on. They tell you the room is handsome. They do not tell you whether three hundred people can see a stage from it, whether the ceiling holds anything, or how a stage gets through the door in the first place.

The room has a job. Once you know what that job is, the shortlist gets shorter quickly.

Four formats, four different rooms

The same floor area behaves completely differently depending on what you put on it, and the gap is wider than most people expect.

A seated dinner is the most expensive way to seat a room. Rounds of ten, the aisles between them and the lanes staff need to reach every table come to somewhere around 1.2 square metres a head before a stage exists.

Theatre seating for a presentation is the cheapest per head, roughly 0.7 to 0.9 with aisles counted, and by far the fussiest about sightlines. Every seat points at one thing, so anything standing between a seat and that thing is a problem no seating plan will solve on the day.

A standing reception needs about half a square metre a head, then spends the saving on bars, food stations and the space people leave around them. A reception floor plan is really a map of where queues will form.

Booths and tables, the shape of an internal showcase or a supplier day, is the most expensive of the four: stands, seating and gangways wide enough for the venue's fire officer, who is usually stricter than the plan you were sent.

That spread is why one room can be right for a conference and wrong for a dinner at the same headcount, and why the first thing to tell a venue is a format, not a date.

Which type of venue suits which event

The format sets the floor area. The type of venue decides what comes with it, and what you have to bring in.

Ceiling height is a specification, not a feeling

Venues quote ceiling height as a single number and it is nearly always the highest point in the room. What you need is the clear height under the lowest thing hanging off it: the chandeliers, a beam, an air handling duct, the sprinkler heads.

Then the question that decides the design and usually gets asked last. Does the ceiling have rigging points, what will they carry, and are you allowed to use them? A room with a seven metre ceiling and a plaster soffit that holds nothing is, for anything you wanted to hang, a room with no height at all. Lights and banners go on ground supported towers instead, which eat floor, need a bigger truck and turn up in the quote as a line nobody had budgeted.

Height also decides whether the back of the room sees anything. A screen's bottom edge has to clear the heads in front of it, roughly 1.8 metres up, so a low ceiling caps how big the picture can be. That is the difference between a keynote and a slide the back half squints at.

Where the service doors are

Staff walk from the service doors to the tables all night, out with plates and back with them. That route is real floor, and the tables sitting on it are walked past through every course. They are also the loudest seats in the room, because a service door swinging open is a kitchen for a second and a half.

On our own floor plans the service route is drawn before the tables are, and the tables are laid around it rather than the other way round. Small habit, and it removes a whole category of complaint.

The doors also decide which end of the room can be the stage. Put a stage in front of them and staff have to cross the show, so either service pauses for every speech or the speeches happen behind a moving line of waiters. Neither is what anyone pictured.

A pillar is worse than a smaller room

A pillar does not make a room smaller. It takes a table out of the event and leaves it in the room.

Nobody sits behind a column by choice, cameras cannot shoot through one, and somebody still has to be seated there, which turns a floor plan into a conversation about who matters least.

A smaller room with a clear span seats fewer people and every one of them is at the event. A larger room with two columns seats more and puts a handful of them at a different event in the same postcode. The larger room usually wins the site visit, because at eleven in the morning with the house lights up a pillar reads as part of the building rather than as a problem.

The test is dull. Ask for a floor plan with the columns marked on it, then count the tables that lose the stage. That number, not the capacity, is what the room seats.

The load-in decides what you can build

Everything in that room arrived through a door. Which door, how wide, and at what hour is the real cap on the design.

Ask for the loading bay hours, the goods lift dimensions and whether anything on the route has a step in it. The lift is the one that bites: a set piece or a screen frame that cannot be broken down has to fit diagonally inside that car, or become a different set piece.

Then ask what time the room is yours, which is not the same question as what time the event starts. Venues often hand a room over a few hours before doors because something else is in it that morning, and a six hour build does not fit a four hour window however many people you throw at it. That constraint belongs in the run of show from week one. Finding it in the week of the event is where the expensive decisions live.

How a function room is priced

Hotels and venues usually price a function room or event space one of two ways: a package per head with a minimum number of guests, or a room hire with a minimum spend on food and drink. A per-head package also carries a guaranteed number, due shortly before the event, which is paid for even if fewer guests arrive.

Ask what each price includes before comparing two rooms. One quote may carry the sound system, the stage and the screen while the other carries only the room, and the cheaper rate is often the second. The usual gaps are in what a room rate leaves out.

Booking a room for the first quarter

The year opens with kick-offs, sales conferences and launches, and they share a calendar with the big rooms' busiest stretch. Year-end dinners hold the ballrooms through December, and in the weeks before Chinese New Year the same rooms go to annual dinners and festive lunches. A January kick-off planned in December chooses from what those events left free. Ask whether the room is free the evening before too: a morning start with a stage needs a build, and a build that waits for last night's event to clear starts in the small hours.

Before you sign anything

Ask for the room's floor area in square metres and a floor plan with dimensions on it, rather than more pictures, then walk it with a site visit checklist. Ask the venue to talk you through the last event they hosted in your shape, and listen for what they raise unprompted. One that volunteers where the service doors are, what the goods lift takes and which rigging points are live has run enough of them to know what you are about to hit.

If the night is a dinner and dance, the ballroom questions get more specific and we wrote them down separately, including the ones venues do not volunteer. If you would rather hand the shortlist over, that is part of what we run across all six formats.

Common questions

How do you choose a corporate event venue in Singapore?

Start from what the event has to do, not from the photographs. Decide the format first, because a seated dinner, a theatre presentation, a standing reception and a booths-and-tables showcase need very different rooms at the same headcount. Then check the four things a gallery cannot show you: the clear ceiling height under the lowest obstruction and whether the ceiling carries rigging, where the service doors are, whether the room has pillars, and how equipment gets in. Ask for the floor area in square metres and a dimensioned floor plan rather than more pictures.

How much space do you need per person for an event?

It depends entirely on the format. A seated dinner on rounds of ten runs to roughly 1.1 to 1.3 square metres a head once service aisles are counted, before a stage. Theatre seating for a presentation needs about 0.7 to 0.9 including aisles. A standing reception needs about 0.5 to 0.65, then spends the saving on bars and food stations. Booths and tables is the most expensive at around 1.8 to 2 a head, because gangways have to stay wide enough for the venue's fire officer. Across every format, somewhere between a third and a half of the floor ends up holding nobody.

What type of venue suits a corporate event?

It depends on what the event has to do. A hotel ballroom or function room suits seated dinners, conferences with a meal and awards nights. A convention or exhibition hall suits booths and tables and large plenaries, but it is often a bare shell that everything is brought into. An auditorium or theatre suits kick-offs and presentations where every seat faces one stage. A unique venue, such as a rooftop or a gallery, suits launches and receptions where the room is part of the message, provided its power and load-in have been tested.

How are function rooms priced in Singapore?

Usually one of two ways: a package per head with a minimum number of guests, or a room hire with a minimum spend on food and drink. A per-head package also carries a guaranteed number, due shortly before the event, which is paid for even if fewer guests arrive. Ask what each price includes before comparing two rooms, because one may carry the sound system, the stage and the screen while the other carries only the room.