Event Venue: Enquiries About Dates, Capacity and Running Order in Chat

Anyone planning a wedding, a company party or a conference often writes to the venue when nobody there can pick up the phone: in the evening, at the weekend and precisely on the days when the team is busy running an event itself. The questions are similar: is our preferred date still available, how many guests fit into the hall, is there in-house catering, where do guests park, where do they stay overnight? Much of this is already set out in documents an event venue has anyway. This article shows which questions a chat assistant can answer from those documents with a source, how it records an enquiry with date, occasion, guest numbers and wishes, and why a date request in the chat is not a reservation. In autumn in particular, when couples and companies plan the coming year, many of these enquiries arrive within a short time.

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Labels in the illustration

• Chat
• assistant
• Venue
• team
• Answer questions
• from the documents,
• usually with a source
• Update documents
• rooms, prices,
• tech, house rules
• Record enquiry
• date, occasion,
• guests, wishes
• Booking calendar
• kept at the venue,
• not in the chat
• Show a preview
• visitor confirms,
• then handover
• Check the date
• day, room,
• capacity, option
• No commitment
• no estimated price,
• no reservation
• Send the offer
• guest accepts:
• the contract
• The chat produces an enquiry
• no reservation, no price without a basis
• Binding: offer and acceptance
• under Sections 145 ff. BGB, team and guest

From the question in chat to the contract

What enquirers ask an event venue

The questions put to an event venue follow the course of the planning. It usually starts with the date, often a preferred one, together with the question of whether there are alternatives. Next comes size: how many guests fit, in which seating layout, is there a second room for the reception? Then catering, equipment and the running order of the day follow, and finally the practical questions about travel, parking, accessibility and overnight stays. A wedding couple asks differently from an assistant organising a conference, but the topics largely overlap. How an assistant in hospitality keeps reservations and allergen questions apart is described in the article on AI chat in restaurants.

The table does not separate by difficulty but by who is responsible for the answer. The middle column holds what applies equally to all enquiries and can be looked up in a document. The right-hand column holds what depends on the individual date, the individual room set-up or an arrangement only the team can make. An assistant that knows this boundary answers the middle column in full and records the right-hand one as an enquiry instead of guessing. If several of these questions arrive in one message, it helps to answer them separately and hand them over separately; how that works is shown in the article on several requests in one conversation.

Available dates: information is not a commitment

“Is our preferred date still available?” is the question many conversations start with. Only the team knows the reliable answer. An event venue’s booking calendar changes constantly: options expire, dates are swapped, a corporate client extends. With XICBOT, the assistant does not sync with an external calendar, and even a list of booked days in the knowledge base would only be yesterday’s status. The assistant should therefore not say whether a day is free but explain how the venue allocates dates and record the wish as an enquiry. For viewings there is a separate route with the booking assistant, more on that below.

• Record the preferred date and alternative dates so that the team does not have to ask again for each alternative.
• Repeat the venue’s rule where it is stored: whether there are options, how long they apply and how an option turns into a booking.
• Name the route by which the team gets in touch, without promising a deadline that nobody has checked.
• State clearly that the enquiry is not a reservation and holds nothing for the guest until the team has replied.

Legally, a contract for an event comes about like other contracts, through offer and acceptance. Under Section 145 BGB, whoever offers to conclude a contract with another person is bound by that offer unless they have excluded being bound. If the guest accepts an offer only with changes, for example with more guests or a different room, Section 150(2) BGB treats this as a rejection combined with a new offer. For the chat this results in a simple division of labour: the assistant collects what the team needs for an offer; offer and acceptance take place between the venue and the guest. Whether a single statement in the chat would already count as an offer is a question for the individual case that professional advice can clarify. It is simpler not to let such statements arise in the first place.

Guest numbers, rooms and seating

“How many people fit in?” cannot be answered with a single number. The same hall holds considerably more guests at a standing reception than at a seated dinner at round tables, and a dance floor or stage takes up space. On top of that, the permitted number of people is not only a question of space: larger assembly rooms are subject to the building regulations of the German federal states, and escape routes and approved seating plans limit how many people may be in a room. An assistant should therefore only give figures that are in the venue’s room list, per room and per seating layout. If someone asks for a number beyond that, it records the question as an enquiry instead of extrapolating.

• Room name and location, such as hall, vaulted cellar or terrace, with a note on which rooms can be combined.
• Maximum figures per seating layout: rows, classroom, banquet at round or long tables, standing reception.
• Deductions for set-ups such as dance floor, stage, buffet or DJ booth, where they change the figure.
• Permanently installed equipment per room: sound system, microphones, projection, lighting.
• Restrictions, for example on open flames, confetti, volume or the end of the event as per the house rules.

Catering, equipment and the running order of the day

After date and size come the questions in which one venue differs from the next. Is there in-house catering, or may an outside caterer come in? How are drinks arranged? Until when may music play, is a band allowed, when can the decoration be set up, by when must everything be cleared? These answers are usually already written down somewhere: in the catering concept, the equipment list, the house rules or an information sheet for wedding couples. With XICBOT, answers come from the documents in the knowledge base, not from the general knowledge of the language model, and an answer usually carries a source reference pointing to where it was found. For the guest this means: they can see whether an answer comes from the house rules or the catering concept and can read up on it there.

• Set-up: from when decoration, flowers and equipment may go into the room and how the handover of the room is arranged.
• Ceremony or programme: whether a non-civil ceremony in the garden is possible, where a lectern stands, how the room is converted for talks.
• Reception and meal: which room is intended for the reception, whether buffet or set menu, how children’s and special meals are handled.
• Music and finish: whether a band or DJ is allowed, until when music may play and what the house rules say about volume.
• Clearing up: by when the room must be cleared and what can be collected the following day.

Accessibility, travel, parking and overnight stays

The practical questions often only come when the decision has almost been made, and they come from guests as much as from hosts. Is there step-free access, a lift, a wheelchair-accessible toilet? How many parking spaces are there, how do you get there by bus and train, is there a shuttle? Where can guests from out of town stay overnight? Here accuracy counts for more than advertising. An assistant should name what the venue specifically offers and draw a clear line for overnight stays: the venue can allocate rooms in its own guest house itself, rooms in a partner hotel are allocated by the hotel. How a hotel answers these questions in its own chat is covered in the article on AI chat for hotels.

Prices only from the price list

“What does a wedding cost with you?” is one of the first questions and can rarely be answered in full in the chat. The price of an event depends on the day of the week, the season, the number of guests, the catering package and the equipment. Many venues therefore only state room hire or per-person packages and calculate the rest in the offer. An assistant should repeat exactly what is published and not estimate a total. With XICBOT, the assistant names no price without a stored basis, and a follow-up check compares price information in the answer against the source. What generally applies to price information in the chat is described in the article on prices in the chat.

The enquiry: date, occasion, guest numbers, wishes

Once the guest has had their questions answered, they should be able to make the enquiry in the same conversation without looking for a second form. The assistant asks for the details the team needs for an offer. Which details are mandatory is set by the venue; if one of them is missing, the assistant asks for it instead of passing on half an enquiry. Before anything is handed over, it shows the details in plain text, and only when the guest confirms does the enquiry go to the venue’s inbox together with the conversation history. More on capturing enquiries in the conversation can be found under the lead assistant.

• Occasion: wedding, birthday, company party, conference or Christmas party, with the desired programme, such as ceremony, reception, dinner and party.
• Preferred date and alternative dates, for conferences with times and the question of whether an evening before is included.
• Approximate number of guests, separated into adults and children where that matters for seating or catering.
• Wishes regarding seating, catering, equipment and overnight stays, as the guest states them.
• Contact route with name and email address or phone number, as the venue has set as mandatory.

If a couple or a private individual enquires themselves, the enquiry is, in data protection terms, usually a pre-contractual measure: under Article 6(1)(b) GDPR, processing is lawful if it is necessary in order to take steps at the request of the data subject prior to entering into a contract. That covers what is needed for an offer, nothing more. If, on the other hand, an office assistant enquires on behalf of their company, they are not a party to the contract themselves; which legal basis then applies to their contact details depends on the individual case. The principle of data minimisation in Article 5(1)(c) GDPR requires data to be limited to what is necessary for the purpose. Under Article 4(15) GDPR, health data are data relating to the physical or mental health of a person which reveal information about their health status; an allergy typically falls within this. How contact details are collected properly in the chat is described in the article on consent in the chat; the assessment of an individual case belongs with professional advice.

Viewings, callbacks and handover to the team

Hardly anyone books a venue without having seen it. The viewing is therefore often the next step after the chat, and it can be set up as an appointment: if the venue creates an appointment type for viewings with duration and time windows, the booking assistant names free times from it on request and records the chosen time as an appointment request. It only becomes binding once the team confirms it; the assistant does not sync with an external calendar in the process. For cases that need a conversation, such as a corporate event across several rooms and days or a wedding with many special requests, the assistant offers a callback request: with a preferred time and the matter, not just the phone number. This too only goes out after confirmation, and when calling back the team has the conversation history in front of them. The assistant does not promise a fixed callback time. What a good callback request contains is described in the article on callback requests in the chat.

What belongs in an event venue’s knowledge base

An assistant is only as good as the documents it answers from. Whatever is not in the knowledge base it usually does not answer, and that is intended: instead of inventing a plausible answer, it says that it cannot find anything on the subject and offers the enquiry or a callback. For an event venue it pays to review the documents before the planning season in autumn, when prices and packages for the coming year are settled. Every document should carry the date from which it applies, and an outdated version should be removed from the knowledge base so that the assistant does not answer from last year’s price list. If a couple from abroad writes in another language, the assistant answers in that language from the same knowledge base.

• Room list with maximum figures per seating layout, combinations and permanently installed equipment.
• Date and option rules: which days are offered, how options work and how an enquiry turns into an offer.
• Catering concept and drinks arrangement, with notes on special meals and on working with outside caterers.
• House rules covering music, the end of the event, decoration, set-up and clearing up.
• Travel, parking, accessibility and overnight stays, each specific and dated.
• Price list, where prices are published, with the date from which it applies.

How reliably an assistant stays bound to its sources can be measured instead of asserted. In our own measurement series 42 of 48 answers carried a source reference; the count covered questions whose answer is in the knowledge base, and six carried no source reference. Why this reference matters to guests and hosts is described in the article on source references in chat answers. If you would like to see how this looks with your room list and your house rules, get in touch.

Frequent questions