How To Successfully Manage Multi-Location Events
As many event planners will know, organising just one event takes lots of time, thought and plenty of planning, imagine what it’s like planning multi-location events!
Whether you’re creating multi-location events that run simultaneously in different cities, countries and time zones worldwide, or perhaps you are managing the main event whilst preparing and managing the after-party? In this blog, we will guide you through everything you need to know about multi-location event management, from what it is to things to avoid and our top tips on making your next multi-location event a success.
What Is Multi-location Event Management?
Multi-location event management involves multiple in-person (and sometimes virtual) events taking place simultaneously in different locations.
These multi-location events can be streamed and then mixed together to be sent out as a live broadcast showing the events as they happen from multiple different locations.
A great example of this kind of multi-location event management is broadcasting on New Year’s Eve, there are lots of events happening simultaneously and they are streamed and mixed live to create a multi-location event.
Another example of multi-location event management that we created was the Sidemen football match and after-party set-up. We were on-site managing the football match event, whilst our other team was on-site managing the afterparty build and rehearsals.
The Benefits of Multi-location Event Management
There are many benefits that running a multi-location event can have on your business or company. We have listed some of the top ones below:
Increased Reach
Due to the fact that your event will be taking place in multiple different locations, you are able to reach a larger amount of attendees as it will make it much easier for them to attend.
More Sustainable
By creating multiple different event location hubs, you are reducing the travel time for many attendees, therefore reducing their emissions.
Flexible Attendance
Attendees can join the event in the way that suits them best. they can either travel to one of the event locations or they can join the virtual broadcast.
Higher Engagement
By creating dynamic content that switches between the different locations, attendees will naturally be more engaged and more likely to interact.
Tips On How To Manage Multi-location Events
The most important thing to remember when you are in charge of multi-location event management is that you have to be on top of your game for organising and overseeing these events. You need to ensure you have all the right tools in place to help you clearly and successfully manage each individual event so that they run smoothly.
Below we have included some of our top tips to help you manage multi-location events:
Create Clear Checklists
Creating a clear checklist, outlining every task that needs completing, by who and for when is critical. A good checklist will ensure that everyone involved in the project knows who is responsible for what and also clearly sets out expectations.
We recommend using Asana to do this. You can create projects where you can create and allocate tasks to your team and clearly see due dates. Asana is a great platform to use as you can duplicate existing projects and event templates that have worked in the past and then just customise them to suit the new event. This is especially beneficial when planning multi-location events as you can ensure each event is working off the same template.
We recommend making your checklist as detailed and precise as possible. We would also recommend creating sub-tasks in your lists. For example, one of your tasks may be “find a venue” but you will need lots of supporting tasks for this, such as “call X venue to check for availability”, “check recommended supplier list”, “site visit to x venue” and so on.
By using a digital platform such as asana to create your checklist you can create a detailed, comprehensive and well-managed checklist.
Separate Budgets and Finances
When managing a multi-location event, you will be given an overall budget to create the events. However, it is important to create and allocate separate budgets for each individual event for multi-location event management.
No matter the size of the event it still needs its’ own separate budget allocated. This is to ensure you keep in line with your overall budget and don’t end up overspending on one of the events and needing to task money away from another event.
Use and Link Calendars
This should go without saying, however, calendars are an important tool to use when planning and managing any event but especially multi-location events. You will want to put key dates and deadlines in as well as plan out timelines and due dates leading up to those deadlines to ensure you’ve allocated enough time to get tasks completed.
You will also need to ensure that any key people involved in your multi-location events are linked to your calendar so they can view it and understand what needs doing and when.
Top tip: you also link up your Asana lists to help manage your calendar better.
Use The Same Vendors
Where possible try and use the same vendor for all locations. Bigger companies will be able to accommodate multiple location bookings as they will have the team and transport to fulfil on delivering services simultaneously.
The benefit of booking the same vendors is that you only have to liaise with one vendor to distribute the services across all your sites. For example, if you have booked catering and you need the same menu to be served to guests at the same time across all of your locations, it is much easier to deal with one supplier than to try and organise and oversee multiple different suppliers.
Furthermore, if you repeatedly work with and like certain suppliers, it will make managing them on the day much easier plus you are likely to get an elevated service as you have built up a strong rapport with them.
Set Realistic Deadlines
When planning a multi-location event, you absolutely must ensure that your deadlines are realistic and achievable and factor in all of the work that is needed. Little delays such as your entertainment taking a week to respond or your technical team needing additional information that requires more emails back and forth with your venues are going to eat up valuable time.
Therefore, you need to make sure you have built plenty of time into your planning to allow for any problems that may be outside of your control.
Services To Consider Booking For Multi-location Events
Below we have listed the top services we believe help support event managers when organising multi-location events.
We hope this blog has helped guide you on how to successfully manage a multi-location event. If you need support in running your next multi-location event then get in touch with our team to find out more.
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