Working with wedding planners, event companies and travel agents as referrers

Planners, event companies and travel agents already talk to the people who will book you. They decide your name comes up or does not. To work with them, give each a one-page sheet of facts. Tell them about new dates the day you know, and settle in writing how you will thank them. A planner who can answer a client quickly has a reason to send you the next one.

What a planner needs before they will quote you

A planner is selling a package to a family. If they have to ring you to find the capacity, the price or whether the caterer is fixed, they may well move on to a venue that answered in one message.

Make a one-page sheet, as a PDF and as text for a WhatsApp message:

• Capacity: seated, standing, with the stage layout
• Rooms: how many on site, how many nearby, tariffs for the season
• Catering: in-house only, or outside caterers allowed, and on what terms
• Rules: music cut-off, decorations allowed, fire safety limits, vehicle parking
• Dates: which are free, which are held, until when
• Who to contact: one name and one number
• What a planner can expect when they bring a client

Keep it to facts the planner can pass on. Do not put your best-case rate in writing if you will not honour it every time.

How a planner hears about new dates

A planner who hears late has already quoted the family another venue. A date that opens because a family cancelled is worth sending the same day, to a list kept for exactly that.

Keep a small broadcast list of planners and agents, not a public group. When a date opens or a new package starts, send a short message: the date, the hall or room, the price, how long you will hold it. When a date closes, say so, so nobody quotes a client against it.

For hotels working with travel agents, the equivalent is a short note when the seasonal tariff is set and another when inventory tightens. Agents want to know what will sell out before it does.

A partner sheet to keep

One row per partner. This is your own record, not a contract.

Go through it whenever a date closes. Look for the partner who sent clients but had none booked. Ask them why. It is usually something specific: a date was gone, the price was higher than another venue's, or nobody called the client back. Each answer is useful.

A thank-you rule that does not need a meeting

Pick one rule and tell every partner. For example:

• A booking that closes through a partner gets a thank-you at the time the event is held, in the form you agreed (a commission, a fee, a complimentary room night or a dinner).
• A client who was sent but did not book gets a thank-you message, not a payment. The partner should hear that you noticed.
• Nothing is promised that you will not deliver. A vague "we will take care of you" is how relationships end.

Money and its legal treatment belong with your own adviser. If you pay commissions, ask your accountant how to record them and what tax applies, and put the amount in writing before the event, never after. The point of the rule is that nobody wonders.

For example: a hill-view hotel in Lonavala

Take an invented thirty-room hotel in Lonavala with a lawn that suits small weddings. It gets enquiries from planners in Mumbai and Pune who organise weekend weddings for families who want a hill setting. Most planners ask the same four questions, and the hotel answers each one differently depending on who picks up.

The hotel writes the one-page sheet, with the lawn capacity, the room count, the rule about outside caterers and the date list. It starts a list of eight planners. All have sent a client before. When a date opens, it sends it on the same day. After the first booking through a planner, the owner calls to say thank you and to ask what nearly stopped the client. Writing and sending the sheet took the owner a weekend afternoon and a few hundred rupees of printing and photographs. The planner mentions that the sheet did not say if the lawn could host a morning ceremony. The hotel adds it. Planners who were guessing can now quote without ringing. Two of the eight still never send anyone, and a third asks for a higher commission than the owner will pay. The owner says no, and that planner goes quiet.

This works when you have enough dates and enough staff to answer quickly. It does not suit a property that is fully booked for the year, or one that cannot hold a date without a deposit it cannot explain.

Where to start

Do not begin with a mass mailing. A brochure sent to a hundred planners is easy to ignore, and a reply tells you little about who will send serious clients. Look instead at who already phones you, who sent the last three weddings, and who asked for your rates last season and never booked.

Begin with the three people who have already sent you a client. Write the sheet this week, send it, and ask each one what they would need to quote you faster. Families who refer each other are a separate matter, covered in building a customer referral programme, and how partners sit among your other sources of events is on the hospitality sales and marketing hub.

If you want help setting up the sheet and the list, tell us what you need.