Let’s say you love your bed. It’s familiar. It’s the one you chose after testing a bunch of other beds. And when you climb in, you know exactly what to expect. So, it should go without saying, that when you travel to a distant city, you take your bed with you, right? Well, no. Taking your bed with you when you travel would be not only expensive, but also more complicated than just using the bed at the hotel where you’ll be staying.
Now, let’s say you like your audio-visual vendors. They’re familiar. You chose them from among dozens of other A/V vendors after a rigorous selection process. You know their capabilities and you know exactly what to expect from them in a variety of situations. Nevertheless, when you put on an event in a distant city, you should leave your A/V vendors behind. Just like your bed. Right?
Well, not necessarily. There are pros and cons to taking your A/V team on the road with you, and it’s worth examining all of them so that the next time you have an event in a distant city, you’ll be prepared to make a thoroughly informed decision.
The Pros: Comfort & Familiarity
The chief reasons to take your A/V team on the road with you are the ones we mentioned at the beginning of this article- you chose them, they’re familiar, you know how they perform in certain situations and you know what they can and can’t do.
Equally important, they know you. They know what you expect, they know how to anticipate your needs and they know your business. Because you know each other and have worked with each other, you probably will have developed a shorthand way of communicating that conveys messages quickly and with little room for misunderstanding.
Finally, your A/V team has a very powerful incentive to perform above and beyond your expectations: job security. They want to continue to work for you. They are going to go the extra mile-or two or three or four miles-to make sure you’re happy. Whatever it takes.
The Cons: Cost & the Unknown
For an A/V team that you hire at a distant site, everything is the reverse. You don’t know them, and they don’t know you. They may have a good reputation and you may be paying top dollar, but you really won’t know how they’ll perform until it’s too late to change horses. They also have divided loyalties-you’re paying to use them, but their paychecks may come through the hotel.
Now, there’s a widely held belief that taking your A/V team on the road with you can be expensive. There’s the airfare, the hotel rooms, the per diems for meals and the extra days on each end of the event for setup and teardown.
In all, the cost of taking your A/V staff with you to a distant event could total thousands of dollars. But what’s the alternative? You can hire an A/V team in the city that’s hosting your event, but that won’t be free. Far from it, in fact. Hiring a local team is likely to be pretty pricey, especially if you hire the team through the hotel, which will impose a hefty markup.
Even so, taking your A/V team on the road with you is likely to cost more than hiring a team at the site. Is the premium worth the peace of mind you’d get from having your own A/V team with you? Before you answer that question, ask yourself what the “cost” of having your event ruined by A/V would be.
Or, you could ask yourself a completely different question: If you had a choice, would you take your own bed with you?
Jim Tzitzura is a founding partner at OnCue Staging. For nearly a decade, OnCue Staging has been the audiovisual staging company that gets you, gets it done and gets results. Jim, and the team he leads, makes it their business to work with event and meeting planners to execute creative and artistically designed events and meetings around the globe.
