February 2025
Venue shortlisting has a habit of expanding. A quick longlist becomes a chain of emails, half-answered questions, and proposals that don’t quite match the brief. Before you know it, you’ve spent hours just trying to get comparable information.
Whether you’re a venue finder handling multiple briefs, an EA/PA booking a leadership away day, an in-house events or marketing lead planning a conference, or an agency producer managing logistics on behalf of a client, the goal is the same: build a confident shortlist efficiently and avoid last-minute surprises.
This framework is designed to help you do exactly that. It’s designed to be used alongside showrounds and virtual walk-throughs, so you can make site visits more focused and decisions more confident. It’s practical, repeatable, and built around the decision points that most often slow bookings down: unclear costs, poor flow, AV uncertainty, accessibility gaps, and “we’ll confirm that later” answers that create risk.
Get clarity on what matters most
Compare venues consistently
Confirm the essentials before a site visit
Shortlisting can go off track when everything is treated as equally important. Instead, separate your genuine deal-breakers from your preferences. Keeping the must-haves focused makes shortlisting quicker and comparisons clearer.
A useful way to think about it is this: what would cause the event to fail, or create a disproportionate amount of stress? Those are your non-negotiables. Everything else is a differentiator.
For many briefs, your core non-negotiables come down to format, flow, and feasibility. Not just “capacity” on paper, but whether the venue can support the shape of the day. A full-team session followed by breakouts, for example, can look simple in an agenda but fall apart if rooms don’t connect well, changeovers are limited, or the venue’s operational constraints don’t match what you need.
These should be specific enough that a venue can give a confident yes/no.
Date and access requirements: date(s), flexibility, set-up and de-rig windows
Location and travel: transport links and the delegate journey
Capacity and format: numbers, “full team” session, breakouts, registration space
Budget parameters: range or maximum, and what it needs to include
Accessibility needs: step-free access, accessible facilities and any attendee requirements
Event priorities: what the day must achieve (e.g. high engagement, senior tone, smooth flow)
These can strengthen the shortlist, but they shouldn’t derail it.
Sustainability credentials and reporting: where required for internal sign-off
Hybrid capability or in-room production support
Catering style and dietary confidence
Branding opportunities and signage flexibility
On-site support and service style
Breakout variety or unusual spaces
These are the signals that usually mean extra friction later.
Vague pricing or unclear inclusions
Slow or incomplete responses
Unclear constraints (access, deliveries, noise restrictions, changeovers)
Poor flow between spaces
AV uncertainty (“should be fine”) rather than clear support
Accessibility described in general terms rather than specifics
A quick sense-check: if you can’t describe your must-haves in one short paragraph, the brief is probably too broad to shortlist confidently.
Most venue comparisons fall down for one reason: people compare different assumptions.
One proposal includes staffing; another doesn’t. One includes AV basics, another prices everything as an add-on. One venue can accommodate quick resets between sessions; another requires fixed set-ups all day. On paper, they can look similar. In reality, they deliver very different experiences and very different risks.
A simple scoring approach can solve this without turning your job into a spreadsheet project. The aim is not to “maths” your way to the perfect answer. It’s to create a consistent way to evaluate venues against what matters for your event and your stakeholders.
The categories that tend to give the clearest picture are: cost clarity, flow and agenda fit, technical confidence, accessibility, sustainability evidence (where required), and catering confidence. If one factor is critical for your organisation, weight it more heavily. The point is not perfection. The point is consistency.
Site visits are valuable, but they should be a confirmation step, not an exploration step. The most efficient shortlisting happens when you confirm the fundamentals early: availability, constraints, and what’s included.
This is where many venue finders and EAs/PAs save the most time. If a venue can’t provide clear answers early, it’s usually a sign you’ll spend more time chasing detail throughout the process.
1) Can they actually host your event as described?
Not just capacity, but the flow, breakouts, and what’s realistic between sessions.
2) Are there any constraints that will complicate delivery?
Access times, deliveries, branding restrictions, noise limitations, storage and similar factors are easier to manage when known early, and painful when discovered late.
3) Will the proposal be clear and comparable?
The quickest shortlists are built on proposals that state inclusions and assumptions plainly.
If diaries are tight, a short virtual walk-through can help you sense-check flow and fit before committing to an in-person visit. It won’t replace the final site visit, but it can speed up the process when you’re narrowing a longlist down to a shortlist. You can take a 360° virtual tour of 15Hatfields here: https://www.15hatfields.com/venue/360-virtual-tour/
If you’re comparing multiple venues, consistency is what saves time. Use the same set of questions each time so proposals are genuinely comparable, particularly around inclusions, changeovers, AV support, accessibility specifics, sustainability and any delivery constraints.
Use as much or as little of this framework as you need. If you’re early in the process, a quick virtual walk-through or showround is often the fastest way to sense-check fit, and you can confirm the finer details afterwards.
The point of shortlisting is confidence, not perfection
A strong shortlist isn’t about finding a venue that can do everything. It’s about creating a fair, consistent way to identify the best fit for the event, and the easiest route to stakeholder approval.
If you’re a venue finder, EA/PA, in-house events lead or agency producer and you’d like a quick, clear response based on your brief, send it over and we’ll come back with the essentials you need to decide, including availability, recommended room flow, and what’s included. If it helps you move faster, we can also arrange a virtual walk-through before an in-person visit.
How to shortlist a London events venue: a practical framework for venue finders and decision-makers
Shortlisting London venues doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Use this practical 3-step framework to compare spaces confidently, streamline site visits and avoid surprises – from capacity and layout to accessibility, tech and costs.
