Is Your Business Hard to Work With?
Many great businesses put up barriers to customers without knowing it. Hard to believe, but true. I’ve been in a few of those situations — having check in hand, ready to commit, but the company or organization is just difficult.
My recent experience with this is through event planning. Unbeknownst to many non-event planners, some venues charge room fees on top of food, beverage, taxes and a rather long list of miscellaneous fees.
As someone with waitservice industry experience, I can’t and won’t complain about many of the fees. But I don’t understand venues that insist on room fees.
Sure, in some cases it may be a business variation of Yogi Berra’s quote about “no one going there any more because it is too crowded.” Maybe restaurants, hotels and other venues need the room fee to make events profitable for them. But as the prospective customer, unless I have significant requirements for the room, a room fee just means I will “vote with my feet,” and select a venue that doesn’t charge me to be there.
Here’s a recent example. I tentatively selected a venue (actually, one of my favorite places in Boston), for a casual event with friends. Guests would go “Dutch treat,” ordering off the menu for food and drink. The event was planned for a Sunday afternoon; post brunch, and basically a slow time for most restaurants and hotels.
All I wanted was to reserve an area (i.e., some bar tables) for my guests to gather. Not a private area, not a private room, nothing that required anything other than “reserved” signs in that area.
The restaurant/bar’s response: they would charge me $400 for me to reserve the space. That $400 would not be a deposit towards food and beverage; it’s a flat-out fee.
Here’s my customer perspective: they want to charge me $400 for me to bring 30 – 40 people in during a slow period. They want to charge me to bring in food and beverage revenue for their business.
While this particular bar is one of my favorites, I’ll be going elsewhere for my event. I’m certain my guests would have easily spent a cumulative total of $1,000+ in drinks and food over a few hours.
I guess they just don’t need my business.
