Hospitality and entertainment establishments often require audiovisual technology that can be seen and heard without seeing the source. Hotel audiovisual companies usually charge between 120 and 200% of the prices required by traditional independent audiovisual companies. Their contracts with hotels vary, but this price increase is often due to the bribes that hotels receive from their internal audiovisual providers. These payments leave little room for the internal company to discount customers.
Hotels and their internal audiovisual company have a partnership agreement that allows them to receive financial incentives from their company. Typically, a hotel's audiovisual contractor will pay approximately 50% of their entire gross budget to the hotel and, perhaps, an additional signing premium to obtain exclusive access to the venue. This is why the price of rental and audiovisual service you receive from a hotel's internal audiovisual provider is much higher than that of an external provider. It's important to remember that, even if a hotel advertises its internal audiovisual services, the hotel audiovisual company almost always doesn't even work for the hotel.
Knowing this and other nuances associated with contracting audiovisual services can help reduce the costs of events and access the optimal audiovisual solution. There is no doubt that the venue will try to dissuade you from hiring an external audiovisual provider, since they have an agreement with their internal audiovisual contractor, an agreement that you have no obligation to comply with unless you sign the contract and accept their exclusivity clause. One of the first steps in planning an event is to secure a venue and, along with that, comes one of the most common mistakes I see event organizers make, which is to use the hotel's internal audiovisual contractor without understanding the potential challenges it can cause. On average, an in-house audiovisual contractor will bill customers between 120 and 200% of the prices charged by an independent audiovisual provider for the same type of event.
Although the table above only shows a breakdown of the costs of an in-house audiovisual technician, it should nonetheless help explain why the price of AV rental and service you receive from a hotel's internal audiovisual provider is much higher than that of an independent provider. Excellent article, I have been making these same observations for years. Hotels will never give you an exact quote that shows all their rates or explain their relationship with their internal suppliers. Conversely, if you agree to use a hotel's in-house audiovisual provider, consider requesting other benefits, such as hiring the hotel contractor for group sessions and using your preferred audiovisual resource for the general session.
As their range of audiovisual equipment is wider, outsourced providers could bring more creativity and ideas to take advantage of audiovisual technology and offer dynamic and spectacular experiences. Provider B, on the other hand, will be able to maximize 100% of your audiovisual budget to create the best possible experience for your event. The other consideration is whether it will be better to organize the event with the hotel's internal audiovisual services or with an external provider. For the audiovisual hotel company, they are in an advantageous position because they operate with a convenience model, similar to that of a convenience store at a gas station.
If the hotel remains firm in using its audiovisual service provider, the planner may choose to book fewer rooms or purchase less food and drink at the hotel to offset rising costs.
