Find Conference venues for rent near me

The Complete Conference Venue Rental Guide

Are you trying to find the ideal location for your upcoming event? Choosing the ideal conference location is essential to giving your staff and guests an experience they will remember, whether a business gathering or a special event. A location with a certain appeal, such as a select landmark, can transform your event from ordinary to remarkable.

A hotel provides first-rate services tailored to your every need from arrival. Do you need fully equipped meeting rooms with AV equipment and Wi-Fi? A hotel can deliver that plus more, with flexible space rental options alongside sleeping rooms. Most hotels also have a dedicated event management team to help with everything from set up to catering and tear down.

Giggster can help you find conference venues for rent in most American and global cities. Browse our 4703 meeting rooms and book a top location for your business event today!

Why Choose Giggster for Your Conference Venue

Conference rooms and fully equipped meeting rooms provide professional settings for all corporate functions. Giggster lists all the available hotels and event spaces with high-speed internet, audiovisual equipment, and other business-focused support.

• Do you want a location with meeting rooms, business amenities, and sleeping rooms? In this case, a hotel is a perfect venue; most have facilities catered to professionals and can provide meeting planning and management services.

• Are you looking for a family reunion setting that can also serve as an off-site meeting space? A private home can be your base of operations when traveling for work. Many have meeting rooms, internet access, and most of the things you need to get business done.

• A co-working suite has a meeting space with teleconferencing tools, the internet, projectors, printing facilities, and flexible booking options. Most also have private offices, shared workstations, and common areas.

• The right meeting space should have presentation technologies and an optimal room layout. That describes a conference center with multiple rooms and special event areas.

Incredible Conference Venues Start at $20/hour

Exceptional Variety & Quality: Giggster can help you rent a perfect space that meets your requirements at just $20/hour. Explore our vast selection of meeting rooms and use Giggster's search option to get a dedicated list, view results, and book the top event space in seconds!

Hassle-Free Booking: Our website makes booking meeting rooms easier. Each listing includes everything you need about the space, rental price, and other details. Before making your reservation, contact the property owner for accurate pricing information.

24-Hour Free Cancellation Policy: You may have booked a meeting space and need to postpone. You can cancel within 24 hours of receiving a booking confirmation. We will not charge you fees if you cancel at least 48 hours before your event start date.

Platform Protections: Giggster has optional protection plans to safeguard property owners and their clients. After booking checkout, you can purchase an event liability policy or damage protection plan.

What Kind of Location Can I Rent for a Conference?

Meeting rooms provide functional and professional settings for corporate events. Giggster can help you locate available spaces in any American city and most global locations and connect you with top meeting room rentals that suit your function. Depending on the event specifics, here are our recommendations for the best meeting space to book.

• Conference Rooms – Board Meetings. Conference rooms are the best backdrops for all formal gatherings, including board meetings. The professional environment supports business discussions centered on performance reviews and making strategic decisions. Hotels, conference centers, and office buildings usually have these meeting rooms.

• Office Buildings – Client Meetings. An office space is an excellent backdrop for client presentations, sales meetings, pitch proposals, and contract discussions. The best choice is a suite with conference rooms and other private meeting areas.

• Event Centers – Product Launches. Event centers have everything needed to host a product launch. They usually have AV equipment and provide planning support, including decoration and catering.

• Restaurants – Business Lunch Meetings. Host visiting staff or board members in a restaurant's private dining room for a business lunch. Making reservations at a hotel restaurant where you have other business functions is even better.

• Co-working Spaces – Workshops. A co-working space encourages collaboration and is the perfect venue for a training workshop. It usually has Wi-Fi and many meeting rooms, which can serve as breakout spaces.

Conference Location Must-Haves

Giggster can help you easily locate a meeting space with all the necessary amenities and services. The real test is identifying an office or event space that meets your specific needs, and your list of location must-haves should help.

Does the room size meet your requirements? You'll need more room for a workshop or conference versus a team meeting. Giggster's meeting rooms indicate the space details, including capacity, which can help you determine if the venue has enough room for your guests.

What is the rental time frame? How long will you need the space? Rental terms vary, but most Giggster listings are available hourly. The nature of your event could add service charges and other costs to the final bill. Before booking, contact the property owner to discuss the rental terms.

Does the location have a meeting planning and management team? Book a location with an in-house planning and meeting management team. This service works for busy professionals who want to attend an efficient meeting in a ready-to-use space. It also gives you peace of mind knowing that the venue is on top of everything related to the success of your function.

How to Plan a Conference

Giggster can help you breeze through the first step of planning a conference, which you will see in our list of meeting rooms. Rentals feature varied services and have different fees, but you can easily identify the perfect place using our location must-have guidelines. Once you have a meeting space, use our suggestions to execute a successful and outstanding function in the best space.

Book the Best Space – Giggster can help you locate the best meeting rooms. Rentals vary based on features, pricing, room layout, and other services. Giggster's search option allows you to narrow your options and book a meeting room that meets your requirements.

Create an Optimal Room Layout – Arranging the meeting space is as important as booking the best space. Before booking, contact the property owner to find out if the venue can accommodate your needs.

Hire a Catering or Event Manager – A venue rental package usually includes a planning team and catering services. To be sure, ask the hotel. When discussing availability, name your price; most hotels can accommodate your budget and curate a successful function.

Keep Guests Entertained – Many meeting venues offer entertainment services, especially team-building activities. Plan your meeting at a location with virtual reality technology to create an immersive experience for remote attendees.

Conference Expenses to Plan For

The rental fees, service charges, and food and beverage spend can add to the total price of planning a meeting. Giggster can help you stay on budget by connecting you with affordable conference rooms with set-up and catering packages. Here are other ways you can spend less and plan a successful meeting.

Consider meeting rooms both in and away from the downtown area.

While looking for meeting rooms in the downtown area is practical and convenient, they are usually the costliest options. Giggster can help you locate affordable meeting rooms beyond a city's downtown core that still feature all the bells and whistles and cost significantly less.

Accept the all-inclusive package.

Most event settings offer all-inclusive packages with rental fees that cover the planning process, set-up, decoration, and catering. Ultimately, these packages are more cost-effective than finding what you would spend looking for independent vendors to deliver these services.

Negotiate fees.

Unless you ask, you'll never know if you could get a discount for advance or bulk bookings. The price on most Giggster listings is flexible, so contact the property owner to discuss custom pricing. The cost might go up or down depending on the time, day, or season, so your best bet in getting a solid rate is to contact the host.

Plan Your Conference with Giggster

That concludes our guide to the meeting and conference rooms you can rent through Giggster. Knowing what's available helps determine which meeting rooms suit your upcoming function. Scroll through our exceptional listings and book your top choice at an unbeatable price today!

10 of the most common conference formats and when to use them

Experts are predicting a renaissance in the events industry after reeling from the financial fissures caused by the pandemic. By 2028, Verified Market Research predicts the events industry will bring in $2.194 trillion, nearly 2.5 times the revenue generated in 2020.

If the predictions become true, the increased revenue could offset the 20 to 50% estimated increase in event-related costs in 2023, according to a Knowland Meeting Planner Survey.

The residual impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic—like supply chain issues, labor shortages, inflation, and venue closures—are still affecting the events industry into 2023, according to a research report by The Vendry.

A push-and-pull of priorities for event organizers may play out in the coming years as brands want to create more must-attend conferences that are filled with personalized experiences while keeping focus on equity to access and opportunities and reducing the industry's well-known carbon footprint problem—both of which are easier to do through virtual conferences.

With event organizers asked to juggle so many variables, Giggster compiled a list of the 10 most common conference formats and when to use each of them using industry reports and online articles.

Micro events

Micro events—smaller and/or geo-specific conferences that became trendier last year—introduced a new event format that allows for greater levels of connection than massive conventions.

Rafat Ali, CEO and founder of Skift Meetings, told The Vendry that these smaller, virtual events could act as a "testbed for more niche topics," potentially proving that an in-person event on the topic is worth the return on investment. This format allows organizers to focus on a hyper-specific audience that is more engaged in a specialized topic.

There's a sustainability perk, too: With smaller gatherings, companies don't have to create as many bespoke production materials—and what they make, they can ideally reuse or repurpose.

Speedy presentations

Lightning rounds, Ignite talks, and PechaKucha are all marked by brevity and used to share ideas in conferences. Many industries have adopted these fast-paced rounds that allow participants to hear about a wide variety of topics they can provide feedback on later, but the formats of Ignite and PechaKucha take it a step further. Ignite talks give presenters about five minutes to fly through 20 slides that advance on timers. PechaKucha provides an extra minute and 40 seconds.

Panel and roundtable discussions

The tried-and-true format of panel and roundtable discussions are still very common agenda items at a conference, though they tend to be most effective when conducted by participants engaged in face-to-face conversation (no unmuting needed!).

Panel discussions offer industry experts the chance to meaningfully share their smorgasbord of viewpoints around a specific hot topic, weaved together by a moderator. These types of discussions can be the crux of conferences by spotlighting complex subjects while positioning the panelists as thought leaders.

Panels allow for audience questions that make conversations feel more authentic and inclusive since the panelists may have to go off-script to respond meaningfully. This conference format doesn't necessarily guarantee equal speaking time for all participants but can be ideal for busy, high-profile spokespeople who lack the time to prepare a speech.

Fireside chats

Fireside chats were born from a series of radio broadcasts by President Franklin Roosevelt, initially aimed to mitigate public concerns surrounding the Great Depression and World War II.

"Fireside chats" are now more commonly conversations rather than addresses and offer more engaging material at conferences than prepared keynote speeches. They feature strong interviewers (as opposed to moderators in panel discussions) who can seamlessly improvise and pivot the conversation with high-profile participants as needed.

Interviewees have the unique opportunity to showcase their personality during these chats, but they must be open to speaking somewhat off-the-cuff to discuss topics such as how their experiences shaped their perspectives of their work or broader viewpoints on the state of their industry.

Keynote addresses

An invitation to give a keynote address is widely considered to be prestigious. The reputation and credibility of the keynote speaker can signal the noteworthiness of the conference to interested attendees.

The choice of a keynote speaker could be as obvious as a leading industry expert or as head-scratching as a celebrity like boxer Sugar Ray Leonard giving a speech to the Petroleum Equipment Institute. The sportsman makes $100,000 or more per speech at non-sporting industry events, according to Business Insider.

Keynote speeches are usually given at the beginning of or during significant moments of the event, and they are designed to cover big-picture themes to inspire attendees, lay the foundation of the event, and provide context on the theme and goals of the conference.

Breakout sessions

For event organizers who want to achieve more tangible goals or have specific projects in mind, breakout sessions like workshops and training sessions are common. Individual sessions typically last a few hours and are usually embedded into a conference format, oftentimes before the event kicks off.

Breakout sessions can enable smaller, informal groups of industry experts to actively participate in training or facilitated work sessions that progress their skills, understanding, or the state of the industry itself. Workshops and training at conferences can be more appealing than other formats (like lectures) to people who are already considered experts, making the best use of their time with well-defined goals or projects to improve as a group.

Trade shows and exhibitions

If you have a big enough budget and a compelling product or service to showcase, bringing an exhibit to a trade show can be worth $10,000 or more. Exhibitions are a strategy for a whopping 94% of marketers surveyed by the Center for Exhibition Industry Research. The center found that marketers have plans to participate in at least four exhibitions in 2022.

Creative partners can help execute a brand's presence at shows and expos to generate leads and increase brand awareness, and if they're lucky, what they create on the showroom floor can even help brands go viral.

Sometimes, the more outlandish the ask, the more engaging it is to the public. For example, a company asked cowboys at an exhibition and rodeo to try an electric period pain simulator. The video of the participants' reactions has over 1.8 million views as of August 2023, proving that period pain is as painful as women say.

In-person conferences

The demand for in-person conferences has not gone away despite the pandemic pause. Virtual conferences will never usurp the connection and inspiration provided by in-person ones, according to 95% of event marketers surveyed by Bizzabo, an event software provider. However, in-person conferences can cost participants thousands, making the ability to connect with others, share unique experiences, access important, relevant content on-demand, and improve sustainability efforts crucial to attract attendees.

"Compelling, one-of-a-kind content makes the difference between ticket sales and simply logging onto YouTube," according to The Vendry report. Kara Dickerson, vice president for strategic partnerships and conferences at the Consumer Technology Association, told The Vendry: "There's a whole community of people saying 'We know we don't have to come in person anymore because we'll get it digitally.' So we are beholden to make sure each experience is not only a really strong one but the really right one, too."

Virtual conferences

If you want to reach the most people possible with your message, virtual conferences can help you reach your goals while allowing organizers to gauge the success of their events with greater ease using digital measurement tools. Virtual conferences provide equitable access to information for geographically diverse attendees—and many are offered for free.

This format is undoubtedly more cost-effective and a great way to entice high-profile speakers and attendees from all over the globe without the major logistics of travel. However, keeping attendees engaged and giving them the ability to network is challenging. According to BlueJeans and Forrester Consulting research, 71% of event decision-makers think that the IRL experience cannot be replicated online.

Hybrid conferences

In-person meetings that are complemented by a virtual component are the future, say some executives, and, as of 2022, 70% of events used the hybrid format, according to Skift Meetings. These execs may be right; hosting a mix of virtual and in-person events is more complex than just doing one or the other, but it does allow organizers to take the best of both worlds as their team's capacity allows. Within hybrid conference formats, organizers can simply stream a physical event—or take on more complexity (and add more interaction among participants) by recreating IRL workshops, matchmaking, and exhibition halls in virtual spaces.

Story editing by Carren Jao. Copy editing by Tim Bruns.