10 key steps to organising a successful event

Every event is unique, as are the different organisational approaches taken by the tourism professionals that manage them.

But, even being unique and particular, to organise an event, the organising hotel or hostel must always follow a series of steps that include understanding the host’s needs, choosing the appropriate techniques and resources needed to hold the event, and hoping for a decent return, either in financial terms or regarding branding and image.

For tourism professionals, we have a single, clear objective: to hold a distinctive event that’s special and unique for both the host and his or her guests.

This protocol will help us do this, offering us the right tools for achieving the objectives laid out by the client. These objectives will depend on whether the event is of a corporate nature, sporting, a convention, congress, or something else.

An overview

Organising an event often turns out to be much more complicated than expected and requires much more planning. There are a series of steps to bear in mind, and they’ll be different depending on what stage of the process we find ourselves at.

For both professionals and private individuals using the services of tourism establishments, the overview of the process involves 3 logical phases: the pre-event, where the project is planned, developed, and organised, production, where the event is carried out, and a post-event phase, where we analyse the event after it has ended.

Communication, order and organisation…the protocol is basic but crucial when holding an event and can help us to predict many of the factors that will lead to – or prevent – a successful event.

The protocol, step by step

This short guide will introduce you to the 10 steps that must be followed to the letter when organising an event.

1. Listen to and understand the desires and needs of the client or executives

Whether it’s an external event, where you act as suppliers or an internal event within our company or organisation, active listening is a fundamental factor. A client may want to hold their wedding in our establishment, you may want to open a new hotel in our chain, you may be asked to prepare a lunch meeting for 5 executives who want to present their new products in a private room or to host the commercial and advertising strategy presentation for a travel agency. Active listening must be the same for all.

2. Planning and goals

Now you need to decide what kind of event you want to organise, what your objectives are and what kind of audience you’re targeting. Is your event institutional, business-related, private, or a family event? Do you want to demonstrate your efficiency in terms of management, values, image, personalised service, etc? Are your target audience civil servants, businesspeople from a specific sector, possible international investors, or a couple celebrating their golden wedding anniversary?

3. Coordinating strategy with other departments involved

Communications, marketing, public relations – the tasks carried out by each of these areas are different, so you need to have a common thread that unites them all. This is really important – the coordination and communication between all of them is crucial to the success of the event.

4. Making contact with institutions, official and private bodies, and professional or industry groups

Who will be supporting your event? Who will be present at the event you’re hosting and, directly related to this, what security guarantees or services need to be in place to present the right image of quality and personalised attention?

5. Once you get going, what do you need to do?

It is very important to prepare a checklist containing all of the tasks that need to be carried out in the 3 phases of the organisation of any event. This will allow you to offer a better experience to our clients.

This list of tasks is one of the broadest resources you’ll have to prepare and can vary depending on the type of the event and the organisation hosting it.

There are a few points that will be on most lists: the design of the event branding/aesthetic, preparing the guest list, design, printing and sending of the invitations, confirmations, budgets and funding sources, reserving and booking the event space and related services, picking a team for the event – both internal and support staff -, bureaucratic subjects, like licenses, permits and insurance, a communication and security plan, etc.

6. Scheduling and personnel

So, who is going to carry out these tasks and how much time do you need to allow for each of them? This is one of the most complex parts of the puzzle because the pieces need to fit together perfectly – each task, the people involved, and the timeframe for carrying it out.

Not adhering to this schedule causes “collateral damage” to other departments or involved parties. That’s why the time you invest in planning and coordinating these three questions will result in the tasks themselves being carried out more quickly and those involved having a clear idea of what they need to do and when.

7. The event programme

The nucleus of the event must always turn around these premises: receiving the guests, coordinating attendees, explaining the purpose of the event and visit, if necessary, the reason the event is being held (laying of the first stone, inauguration, prize-giving), the host or guest of honour’s speech, the meeting of the host and their guests (a lunch, dinner or cocktail hour) and, finally, the closing ceremony.

8. Communication

A successful event needs an adequate and personalised communication plan.

This document should establish the promotion of the event, the media via which the news of the event will be shared with the press, sharing the event on various social media accounts or just the ones relevant to our sector, inviting any online influencers, so they can include the event in their posts, creating a newsletter specifically for the event, etc.

9. The big day arrives

In order to ensure the event is the perfect “choreography” or “performance”, it is essential that everything is well coordinated, that everyone involved knows what their role is and that all interactions between these two points are natural and fluid.

To ensure this, there are two points of importance: communicating what is going to happen to the host so that they can manage it in the best possible way and having a trial run of the event so any wrinkles that appear can be ironed out before the big day.

10. Analysing the management of the event and the result achieved

If you don’t analyse, you can’t improve, and if you can’t improve, you can’t help your tourist organisation to maintain, grow or expand. The team leader needs to sit down with all of the parties involved in the event (client, in-house team, and external providers) to study and reflect on the strong points of the event, and the points that need to be modified or removed the next time.

As we can see, any event organization must follow some steps to achieve a right execution. We have identified the main ones but, for sure, we could enrich the procedure with many more. Every experience that we will live, will provide us some more knowledge and that will improve the next one, no doubt.