Benefits and disadvantages of using an In-house av company in a venue
3 nights ago I bumped into my old friend Claudio in a restaurant in Hoi An, Vietnam. (Yes, I’m on holiday and I love Vietnam and the Vietnamese people!)
After all the standard catching up questions, “how is your mum”, “is your daughter going to school”, how old is your wife.. (what? Claudio said, she looks sooo much younger than you!!!.. Yes thanks Claudio!!) Claudio asked me a question about In-house AV companies in Venues.
Claudio owns a small AV production company in Milan, Italy.
So Cris, what do you think about the pros and cons of In-house AV companies in hotels, function centres and Wedding venues?
I had to think about it for a couple of minutes as I wasn’t 100% sure.
Here is more or less what I came up with.
The benefit for the venue is that they deal with a company they know very well and because of that, they can trust that company to set up and meet all the venue standards and requirement without need of any of the venue staff to spend time answering questions and overlooking the setup.
Another benefit for the venue is that the In-house AV company has normally an account manager that deals with all the questions related to the event and knows the venue very well.
There could also be some financial benefit for the venue, but let’s overlook this point.
As per the final client, the benefits would be first of all to have one supplier to deal with (or at least 2 suppliers that are on the same page) instead of two suppliers with no affiliations to each other. Another benefit could be that the standard package set up meets the requirements for the client and that means less time spent organizing where projectors, stage and speakers would be best set up for the event.
As per the cons what I can think of, is that to achieve a great and flexible set up in a venue could be very costly for the In-house AV company and they will rely on the venue to “sell” their services to their clients. As per the venue they want to make sure that they choose a professional AV company that does not only do in-house event but also event productions so at any time they would be able to satisfy any request from the client for custom set-ups, extra last-minute gear or a totally different set up from what is on offer as a standard in-house package as they will have stock and knowledge on how to set up and run a successful event outside of that particular venue.
As per the client, the cons could be a more expensive option as the cost of labour will increase. (be aware that this may not be true in some venues, so do your own research).
Another downside could be that if the client hires a “Non-professional” company the venue could be very frustrated with issues like Test and Tag etc etc and the event could suffer, but this is also true for every event in and out from venues.
In conclusion, I think you have to do your research and weigh the pros and cons but one thing is clear, make sure you employ a professional AV company as your event depends on it…
By the way, this conversation with my friend Claudio was in Italian, so I may have missed or suggested something a little different to him but that’s ok I’m sure he got the idea.
Here is an example of RTR In-house AV venue, Encore St Kilda a premier venue on St Kilda Beach.
And here is another read with regards to stage and sound systems, if you have a spare 5 minutes:
http://staging4.rtrproductions.com.au/speakers-facing-band
At RTR Productions we can help with your event or venue set up. For over 15 years we have supplied staging, audio, visual and lighting to the entertainment industry.
Claudio, thanks for dinner, was great seeing you again…. and BTW my wife is 1 year and 1 month older than me!!!
