An event venue website that gives planners the specs fast
Event planners shortlist venues quickly. They check capacity for their layout, whether the date might be free, what catering and suppliers are allowed and roughly what it costs. An event venue website that gives those specs in seconds, then captures a dated enquiry, gets onto more shortlists than one built around mood photos.
How planners use a venue site
A corporate planner might have a brief for a hundred-person dinner with a stage and a breakout room, and ten venues to check before lunch. A couple planning a wedding might be browsing more slowly but asking the same questions. Both scan for numbers, constraints and dates. Beautiful photography helps them remember you; facts get you onto the list.
The capacity and layout table
The single most useful element on a venue site is a table of rooms by layout. Fill it with your own figures, agreed with your fire risk assessment, and keep it the same on every page that mentions capacity:
| Column | What it tells a planner |
|---|---|
| Room name and floor area | Which space, and whether it's on the ground floor |
| Theatre, classroom, boardroom | Seated capacity for talks and meetings |
| Banquet and cabaret | Seated capacity at round tables, with and without a dance floor |
| Standing reception | Maximum for drinks and networking |
| Natural light, blackout, ceiling height | Whether presentations, staging and rigging work |
| Step-free access | Whether every guest can reach the room |
Kept in an Anticode CMS collection with a field per column, each room gets its own page at its own address with photos and a floor plan image, and the list page shows them side by side.
Rules planners need before they enquire
- Catering
- Exclusive in-house caterer, an approved list, or open to any caterer, and whether there's a kitchen for them.
- Drink
- Bar service, corkage, and the licence's finish time.
- Suppliers
- Approved lists for AV, florists and entertainers, load-in access, and insurance you require from suppliers.
- Noise and finish times
- When music must stop and the venue must be cleared.
- Restrictions
- Candles, confetti, pyrotechnics, fixing to walls.
Pricing guidance
Venues often avoid prices, but planners with a budget skip a venue with none. A guide by day of week and season, or a minimum spend, with what's included (furniture, staff, AV, cleaning) and what isn't, filters enquiries in your favour. Describe the structure even if you won't publish figures.
The dated enquiry
An enquiry without a date is hard to act on. Ask for the event type, preferred date and alternatives, guest numbers, layout, rooms needed, start and finish times, catering needs and budget. Put the date fields first. With this many questions, use a custom form tied to a site function (up to 30 text fields) or an app-built form with a field for each; submissions reach you through Anticode's form pipeline, sealed at rest and emailed to you. Through connectors, enquiries can also land in HubSpot as a lead, in a Google Sheet as a pipeline, or in a Slack channel.
Viewings fit the booking calendar; event dates don't
Anticode's booking calendar is a good fit for show-rounds: it shows the coming days, takes one booking per slot for each service and refuses dates more than 120 days ahead, with six fixed times a day (Mondays skipped) that you confirm yourself. It isn't an availability calendar for events. Event dates are often booked a year or more out, involve provisional holds and contracts, and can't be confirmed from a public form. Keep event dates in your venue diary and let the enquiry start the conversation.
Mistakes venue sites make
- Capacity given as one number ("up to 200") with no layout.
- Only empty-room photos. Show real set-ups: a dinner, a conference, a wedding, with permission.
- Floor plans as tiny images that can't be read on a phone.
- No information on access for disabled guests.
Building it with Anticode
Describe the venue in a sentence: "a converted mill in Bradford with three event rooms for conferences, dinners and weddings, with capacity by layout, viewing booking and dated enquiries". The Architect plans pages such as Spaces, Pricing, Book and Contact, and asks up to three questions. Editorial (Geist) or Luxury (Jost) suit most venues; Brutalist (Archivo) an industrial space with a strong identity. Upload your own photographs. Related guides: wedding venues and caterers.
Limits
- No live availability or provisional holds for event dates.
- No contracts, deposits or invoicing. Use a payment link for deposits if you like, alongside your own contract.
- No uploads in forms, so planners send briefs and floor plan requests by email.
- No ticketing for public events you run yourself.
Questions people ask
Can planners check venue availability on the site?
Not as a live calendar. They send a dated enquiry and your team checks the diary. Viewings can be booked online.
How should I show venue capacity?
As a table by room and layout: theatre, classroom, banquet, cabaret and standing, with access and room features.
Can enquiries go into our CRM?
Yes, if it's HubSpot, Airtable or Notion, or anything that accepts a webhook. Each submission is sent once, without retries.