Watch a real brief turn into priced, available venues in 15 minutes

Chloe Richardson tries Deep Venue Research with Hire Space co-founder Will Swannell (8 minutes).

Most venue searches start the same way. You write a few lines, send them to a handful of venues and wait. What comes back is each venue’s guess at what you meant, priced for an event you didn’t quite describe.

We wanted to show what happens when the search starts by understanding the brief. So we sat Chloe down with our co-founder Will Swannell and a brief she made up on the spot: an intimate reception for around 100 senior leaders, all fans of Kelly Clarkson, in a venue with the homely studio feel of her live shows. Then we let the clock run.

It asks before it searches

The same words can mean very different venues. As Will puts it in the film, what “quirky” means to a law firm is different to what it means to a creative agency. So before it searches anything, Deep Venue Research asks a couple of follow-up questions, then puts forward a few first ideas. Chloe gave each one a quick “Love it” or “Nope”, and that feedback shaped everything that followed.

She said her brief out loud rather than typing it, which is how she’d normally work.

“Whenever I’m speaking to any AI bot, I always do it verbally because I’m so busy running around.”
Chloe Richardson, Global Content Architect & MC

Every venue on the web, checked before you see it

Then the deep research runs. It searches the whole web, not only the venues already on Hire Space, and builds a profile on the spot for any venue it finds that isn’t listed yet. “It could be a venue that only opened last week and just put the website up,” Will says. “It’ll find it.”

Every venue it finds is then checked against the brief before it reaches your shortlist, from capacity and accessibility to the feel you asked for. That checking is why the research takes about 10 minutes, and it’s the part that saves you the most time afterwards.

“When you’re using AI, it produces results but then you have to go back and verify and do your own research. So the fact that these are all ready to go off the shelf, I love that.”
Chloe Richardson, Global Content Architect & MC

Chloe’s shortlist came back with 24 venues and six top picks. Each venue page shows photos, a map, why the venue suits the event and, just as usefully, where it might fall short.

A price range before you enquire

Every venue on the shortlist also carries an indicative quote: a price range based on real quotes for similar events. For the Lansdowne Club, Will explains, the range came from two recent quotes for similar events, adjusted for the time of year and the rest of Chloe’s brief.

It isn’t the final quote and doesn’t pretend to be. What it does is let you compare all 24 venues side by side, see which sit at the top of your budget and spot where you could save money to spend elsewhere.

Availability, checked for you

When Chloe picked the venues she liked, Deep Venue Research drafted the availability email for her to edit and send. For qualifying business events, like her reception for 100, our team then calls every venue she chose at the same time, and she could follow the calls as a live transcript.

“It feels like something from the future, and I guess because it is.”
Chloe Richardson, Global Content Architect & MC

From there it’s a case of choosing your favourites and booking site visits. Brief to priced venues, with availability checked, took 15 minutes.

Try it with your own brief

Describe your event the way you’d say it out loud. A venue expert from our team is there when you want to book.

Try Deep Venue Research

Transcript

Show the full transcript

Lightly edited for reading.

0:00 Chloe: Hello, my name’s Chloe Richardson, and I’ve been in the events industry for 17 years, watching it evolve in so many different ways over that time. Recently I’d heard quite a lot about Hire Space’s Deep Venue Research, a new AI tool that lives and breathes venue sourcing, finding the most suitable venue for any event anywhere in the world. And today I finally got to try it for myself. I asked it to find a space for an intimate senior leadership event for fans of Kelly Clarkson, in a venue that represents how she sets the stage during her shows. A homely studio vibe.

0:41 Chloe: So you can also do it by voice?

0:44 Will: Yes, you can just dictate your brief.

0:49 Chloe: That’s how I would normally do it. Whenever I’m speaking to any AI bot, I always do it verbally because I’m so busy running around. So what should I tell it?

1:01 Will: You can tell it whatever you want.

1:03 Chloe: An intimate event for around 100 senior-level professionals. All of these professionals are big fans of Kelly Clarkson, so the venue should represent exactly what Kelly represents when she’s on stage. That’s a studio feel. Intimate vibes, comfortable, nice furnishings. So it shows you how long it’s going to take. It says “finding initial venues”. What does that mean?

1:34 Will: This is one of the things that sets this apart from other AI tools. We built this having done venue finding for 14 years. And we know that when one person gives a brief and another person gives exactly the same brief, it can mean two completely different things. They can use the same words and it means different venues, because what quirky means to a law firm is different to what it means to a creative agency. So the first thing we do is bounce some ideas off you. It spends 30 seconds putting some ideas together, and you can say that’s not really what I want.

2:19 Chloe: Or you just click “Love it” or “Nope”. Let’s go for “Love it” for Number 11 Cavendish Square, “Nope” for the second one, probably a bit too old-fashioned, and I’m willing to give The Photographers’ Gallery a go. I think you could do some good stuff with that space.

2:38 Will: So now it’s got a bit of feedback.

2:41 Chloe: So now it starts the deep research process.

2:45 Will: If you’re a venue finder and the person giving the brief spends a couple of minutes giving you the top lines, it’s really easy to go away, spend loads of time searching and not get it quite right. So we always get the brief right first. Now it’s searching the entire internet, not just what’s on Hire Space, to find the perfect venue. If it’s on Hire Space, great. If it’s not, it will find it and create a profile on the fly. It could be a venue that only opened last week and just put the website up, and it’ll find it.

3:26 Chloe: It literally scrapes the entire web.

3:29 Will: So, fast forward 10 minutes, and here are the results for your Kelly Clarkson event. It’s picked out 24 venues and highlighted six of them. Which of these catch the eye?

3:52 Chloe: I can see already, from the pictures, this one looks exactly like the backdrop of her set. And can I presume that if they’re all on the screen, they all fit the brief in terms of capacity and accessibility?

4:11 Will: If they’re there, they’re good. It’s gone through a checklist, and that’s why it takes 10 minutes. It’s spending the time checking the hard constraints.

4:25 Chloe: That’s often the worst thing, isn’t it? When you’re using AI, it produces results but then you have to go back and verify and do your own research, so it never ends up being as efficient as you wanted. So the fact that these are all ready to go off the shelf, I love that.

4:43 Will: You can see photos, a map, why it suits the event, and importantly, potential compromises. And you can also see the indicative venue quotes.

5:02 Chloe: That’s interesting. How has it come up with that, based on what I’ve told it already?

5:10 Will: We’ve had two really recent quotes come back from the Lansdowne Club for similar events. So it’s based it on those two quotes, then it takes into account the time of year and everything in your brief, and comes back with a range.

5:26 Chloe: So as soon as you get the results, you get an idea of a quote range. Will that be the case across all the venues it picked out for me?

5:37 Will: It will. You can compare all 24 venues by the quotes that are likely to come in, based on what they’ve sent us before. It’s not going to be the exact quote, but it gives you a range. You can see which venues are probably going to be a bit cheaper, which a bit more expensive, which are touching the upper end of your budget, and where you can save a bit of money so you can splurge elsewhere.

6:05 Chloe: And if I wanted to check availability at a couple I really liked, do I just press “Check availability”?

6:18 Will: Just select the ones you want, and the email is drafted for you. You can edit it. Then, for certain qualifying business events, and an event of over 100 people would qualify, we call all of the venues you selected at the same time.

6:49 Chloe: And do I see in real time whether they’re available?

6:54 Will: You can see the calls as a live transcript as they go. Our team is calling the venues.

7:02 Chloe: So you can watch it all unfold.

7:04 Will: It feels like something from the future, and I guess because it is.

7:08 Chloe: And once you know the availability, you can choose to book.

7:13 Will: Choose the ones you want, arrange site visits, and away you go. So we’ve gone from taking the brief to priced venues that nail it, with availability, in 15 minutes.

7:29 Chloe: That’s so good. Thank you for showing me. You can explain it a million times, but seeing how it’s done and doing it with you, it’s so easy. Anybody could do this. Give it a go yourself at research.hirespace.com.