Are you currently hosting healthcare conferences or educational events for hundreds or thousands of attendees? Developing a workable budget can present significant challenges when preparing for these gatherings. You’ll need to find ways to stretch the available funds while ensuring you’re optimizing the attendee experience.
Plan for all relevant expenses
Looking to offer an all-encompassing, engaging event for attendees that require entertainment, meeting space needs, food, and more. Preparing a budget for a healthcare conference requires the appropriate allocation of funds in several areas:
Venue hire
You’ll need to find a suitable venue to accommodate all your attendees while providing space for breakout sessions and other activities. The facility’s location can also be crucial, especially if travel is necessary.
Staff time
You may need to hire extra staff to assist the attendees and cater to their needs. You’ll want to avoid situations where people have questions or concerns, and no one is available to provide guidance. If you are not paying staff, you need to accommodate time, and possible budget for volunteers needs.
Food and beverage
Longer events require you to feed the attendees. You’ll need to determine the type of fare you wish to serve and whether you want to provide an open bar. These costs can be prohibitive, so you’ll need to create strict budget limits in this area.
Entertainment and recreation
Are your healthcare conferences strictly business or do you want to intersperse some fun events to lighten the atmosphere? Do you want to include an off-site excursion to a local landmark or tourist attraction? Are you thinking of hiring a musical group or another form of entertainment?
Equipment, apps and tech
Expect that your attendees will want to stay connected to their offices during the event. Ensure that your venue has the technical infrastructure to meet these communication requirements. You might also need access to specific technologies to support the speakers and their presentations.
Marketing and promotion Expenses
Your budget should include funds for advertising the event to get the word out and boost attendance. Depending on the marketing vehicles you choose, these costs can range from minor to substantial.
Speakers and training
You’ll need to hire speakers and provide training activities that fulfill the attendees’ learning requirements while still fitting your event budget.
Air and ground transportation
Are you planning to cover the airfare of speakers who must fly to the conference? Do you have a way to transport them to and from the venue?
Accommodations
If you’re planning a multi-day event such as a weekend conference, you’ll need to arrange for suitable accommodation and verify availability on the designated dates. Finding housing room blocks or a housing vendor to help adjust the rate you are spending on these accommodations is a great resource.
Managing conference budgets with CME tracking and credit issuance software
Attendee Interactive offers a suite of user-friendly healthcare event management systems to simplify the conference budget management process. Use our software to assist with CME credit tracking and issuance to ensure attendees can manage their credits in one convenient location. Our products also enable speakers to manage their content via a dedicated dashboard.
