Typically, most event floor plans are created with the intention of simply arranging everything nicely inside the event space. However, a far more effective approach is to plan your event with a floor plan designed to drive attendees to key areas and activities. This is not as challenging as it may sound. It’s more about understanding how people move around an area and what will attract them to certain places.
Start With the Entrance, Then Work Against it
The biggest mistake in event design is putting all your best experiences closest to the entrance. In theory, it makes sense, welcome your guests with all the most engaging elements. In reality, this just creates a bottleneck, with guests stuck in line to get in while half of the event space stands empty.
Hold your high-engagement stations back. As soon as guests see something compelling, they’ll move forward to investigate, which brings them into close proximity of other guests, the bar, and the rest of the event. They’ll naturally float to the less-congested areas. Your entrance should not be the climax. It should be the orientation.
Designing For the Reluctant Participant
Not all of your guests would eagerly get up in front of 200 people and become a part of your event. And, the best thing about those guests is that, when you give them the right opening, they can often be the most enthusiastic and engaged guests in the house.
Whether they’re invited to wade in via open or Enclosed Photo booth hire is a decision you need to make as a designer. Enclosed design just about solves the issue of privacy at its source, they’re not standing in front of a camera in the midst of a room. For that kind of guest, this is the difference between taking part and watching.
It can often result in better, more real content too, because people know the difference and simply aren’t “on-stage” when they’re in the enclosed photo booth. And yeah, they can often tell.
Zones, Flow, and Where the Bar Actually Belongs
Zoning strategy is simple enough. In principle, you just identify what type of activities will be happening in different parts of your venue, and split the space accordingly. Dining, entertainment, networking, and relaxation are pretty typical categories to start with. The harder question is where those different zones should connect.
Bar and social hub areas that are placed in corners can cause problems. They become isolated, with your guests naturally tending to gravitate to one spot and not moving around the space. If you locate the bar right in the center, it becomes a node that naturally bleeds guests into every other part of the room or venue, turning it into a 360-degree flow.
This means that every guest who wants to reach any other part of the venue will have to walk past the bar, possibly making some kind of unplanned connection on their path to or from the restrooms, the buffet or the live music. That’s the goal your space planners are looking for.
Buffer Zones Aren’t Dead Space
When an activity is popular, it creates a line. A line formed organically in the middle of space blocks traffic, blocks visibility, and creates friction for all involved. Incorporating a wait-zone into the design, a specific spot for individuals to patiently wait for their turn, contains that excitement of a line without letting it spill into the room.
Those buffer zones have a double function. Users waiting in a good-looking spot are still visible, which increases interest. The line becomes part of the advertisement. If you’ve activated correctly, people from the other side of the room will see the line and become interested.
Lighting, Furniture, and the Signals Guests Don’t Consciously Notice
Usage of lighting transitions in behavioral floor planning is not only underrated but often overlooked. By implementing brighter task lighting in interactive zones, we’re indirectly showing the guest that “something happens here!”.
On the other hand, implementing softer ambient lighting in lounge zones, sends the message to “slow down here!”. Guests will respond to this type of behavioral strategy without translating it as an order. It just feels like that’s the right place to stop and sit rather than the right spot to engage.
Similar logic applies to the height of the seating. Cocktail tables will imply a short interaction situation; gathering, chat, and then move to the other area. Low lounge sofas will imply a deeper chatting situation.
By having both types throughout the venue, the guest will select by themselves their preferred degree of interaction. The ones wanting to have deep networking situations will go to the lounge areas. The ones wanting to work the room will stand up.
If 74% of event attendees, according to the Event Marketing Institute, say that participating in branded events makes them more likely to purchase the product, we either open the gate to these engaged guests or keep it locked without even knowing it.
The Layout is the First Decision
By comparison, everything else, lighting, furniture, entertainment, functions within the boundary identified by the plan. If that’s not right, everything else in the event has to labor to make up for it. If it’s right, people come together without you even having to encourage them. That’s what you want: a room that carries its share of the load before the guests hit the door.
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