AI for Events
and Venues
AI in venues can range from scary, where someone has automated things inappropriately and your business is now facing consequences, to dull but necessary, like complying with Martyn's Law and picking a tech provider. Both are worrying, especially if they're pitched in a breathless sales call without grounding in what happens in your venue or how it should work. We've seen the former, and the latter is expected to commence in Spring 2027. We're happy to help in-between, too.
Record the booking
Assign the work
Share live changes
Everyone works from the latest event plan.
Where AI helps in a venue
Some common areas where AI can be helpful in venues:
Dynamic pricing (ticketing): define rules for changing prices based on demand; implement via your ticketing platform such as Spektrix. Staff should be able to review and approve changes
Reduce no-shows: analyse past behaviour to understand who's likely to attend, build workflows to nudge the others. Combine communication like email and SMS reminders, incentives (deposits, transferable tickets) and commercial levers such as waitlists to sell on and hold-backs to improve occupancy. Test with control groups
Assistants for guests or staff (chatbots): build assistants that can answer common questions using event/venue content; give them access to live information (booking terms!) and a way to escalate to staff, especially when the record is missing or unclear
Personalised recommendations for ticket extras, hospitality, and local businesses: understand what works for whom from past behaviour, such as tickets, surveys, loyalty programmes, CRM, Wi-Fi, payments, exhibitor/stall plans, dwell-time etc., and predict likely interest from this; integrate into booking journey, venue app, comms etc.
Matchmaking (networking events): link attendees based on interests, objectives, roles. Get explicit consent for this and make it easy to opt-out and manage who can view your info
Crowd management: use CCTV/computer vision or simpler/less risky methods to understand occupancy, dwell-time etc.; build processes for staff to respond to insights such as queuing bottlenecks
Automated reports (event organisers): create summaries of surveys and session transcripts. Get consent for these in advance; humans must check before sharing
What we scope before anything is automated
Automated processes should be scoped in terms of tech, legal including data and privacy, safety (including Martyn’s Law) and design/UX implications. Some examples:
If you’re running a conference and want to automate matchmaking, or anything else that requires consent from delegates, you can’t rely on ToU being accepted, they need to positively consent to matchmaking.
If you wanted to use facial recognition it is special category data so would likely need a DPIA but you’d also want to explore options that didn’t use biometric data before proceeding with FR, and have your DPO agree the lawful basis and purpose.
If you wanted to use your CCTV footage to analyse trends or behaviour you’d need to think about privacy, safety, Martyn’s Law implications and explore options that didn’t use CCTV before proceeding with CCTV.
If you’re planning to send an email to people who’ve signed up to a conference you’ll need explicit consent, need to offer an opt-out, maintain a suppression list and ensure you’re aligned with the ICO.
Measuring whether it worked
You also need to think about how you’ll measure success, which may involve looking at historical data to establish some metrics. For example:
% reduction in no-shows.
Revenue from increased attendance.
Improved open and/or click through rates.
Staff hours saved.
And how much it’ll cost:
To implement initially
For that season/year
Per event
Per month
For tech, support and maintenance, which is ongoing, but can be DIY with the right documentation.
Get in touch
We can do a review of your operation for a fixed fee looking for opportunities for automation. The review is scoped to one event/venue.
Send us a booking report and a summary of common questions/tasks from customer service and we’ll let you know what process should be automated first along with a couple of other opportunities.