Booking Exhibition Space? The AV Questions Worth Asking Up Front

Exhibition season fills up fast, and the venues that look straightforward on paper often have practical constraints that only show up once you're planning load-in. Here's what's worth asking before you sign.

A lot of that friction comes down to AV and infrastructure details that are much easier to resolve at booking stage than a fortnight before doors open. Whether you're booking a keynote hall or a run of breakout rooms, the questions below are the ones worth raising with the venue before you commit.

What to ask before you sign

• Power: where are the drops, what's the capacity, and can you get dedicated circuits where you need them?
• Rigging: are there approved points, what are the load limits, and does the venue handle rigging in-house or expect you to bring a certified crew?
• Access: confirmed load-in and load-out windows, vehicle routes, lift dimensions, and whether multiple teams will be working the same space on the same day.

It's also worth pinning down what the venue provides as standard versus what you're expected to supply. In-house PA, screens and lighting may be included, limited, or unavailable depending on the room. Ask who the technical contact is, whether outside AV suppliers are permitted (and if there are preferred or exclusive partners), and whether a site visit is available before you commit.

For multi-room or multi-day events, check how sound carries between spaces, what WiFi capacity looks like under load, and whether there's secure storage for kit overnight. Small details like column positions, ceiling height and floor loading can shape what's actually possible in a space.

Why leaving it late costs you

During peak exhibition season, good AV suppliers and rigging crews book out weeks ahead. Leave planning too long and you're not just scrambling for availability: you're making decisions with less room to fix surprises. Site visits get harder to schedule. In-house kit may already be allocated to another event in the same building. Load-in windows shrink, change requests get expensive, and problems that a walk-through would have caught early get discovered on the morning of the show.

Most of this isn't dramatic. It's the practical stuff that runs smoothly when it's asked at booking and painful when it's asked at the eleventh hour.