MARCHING FORWARDS
Peter Heath , founder of Venue Performance , says that a 400 % surge in confirmed bookings for March is the tonic the industry needs
n last month ’ s article I looked back at February ’ s figures and while rejoicing in the Government ’ s announcement about the industry being given the green light ( but not until 21 June ), we also cautioned about the journey ahead . However , the numbers are the numbers , and I ’ m pleased to be able to report that during March , event bookings ( actual contracts signed ) rose by nearly 400 % ( Fig 2 ).
Now , let ’ s be clear : 400 % sounds
impressive , and it is , but the start point is from a very low base indeed . Pretty much zero to be accurate but the numbers don ’ t lie and during March , the line heads upwards quite steeply and that is something to rejoice about .
So , let ’ s take a look at the numbers and see what devils we may find in the detail . We have over 20 reports that we use for our insight at Venue Performance , and if you are a user you can access all of them . But
Christmas – lead time ( Fig 1 ) for the next few months and for the purpose of monitoring our industry ’ s return , we ’ re going to focus on two key reports .
First , the Bookings Report : this shows the average number and type of events that were booked at each venue during any given period . We ’ re looking at the March period .
Secondly , the Booking Trends Report : this focuses on when those events are booked for , also known as ‘ lead time ’.
Probably the most anticipated types of events are conferences , summer parties and Christmas parties . That is where we will focus our attention this month .
Conferences , normally , are big in volume , size and cash . They are also a key indicator of market mood . A good old-fashioned bellwether .
Conferences The numbers are good but not as good as we would have liked . But let ’ s be honest , we probably knew that these would take a while to come back .
Bookings for March have gone from 0.4 in January , 0.7 in February and to 1.9 for March . That ’ s a four-times multiple from January and a nearly three times multiple for February . So most definitely on the up but as I said previously , a low base and low volume so let ’ s not get too
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