It’s Not Too Late to Book Your Christmas Party

September is well and truly here, the summer holidays are over and someone in the office has just asked the question nobody particularly wanted to hear:

“What are we doing for the Christmas party?”

If your immediate reaction is mild panic, don’t worry. You haven’t necessarily left it too late. Yes, some of the most sought-after Christmas party venues will already have their prime December dates booked. Yes, the Thursday and Friday nights disappear first. And no, we wouldn’t recommend leaving it until the first week of December and hoping for a Christmas miracle.

But there are still plenty of good options available. The trick is knowing where to look and being prepared to be a little flexible.

First of all, don’t assume everything is booked

One of the biggest mistakes organisers make at this time of year is assuming that all the good venues must have gone. They haven’t. London alone has hundreds of potential Christmas party venues, from hotels, restaurants and private dining rooms to historic buildings, blank canvas spaces, bars, boats and more unusual event venues.

Availability also changes constantly. Provisional bookings are released, companies change their plans and dates suddenly become available again. That means a venue which appeared fully booked a few weeks ago may now have exactly the date you need. This is where speaking to venues rather than relying entirely on online availability can make a considerable difference.

Thursday Isn’t the Only Night of the Week

Thursday is often the first choice for corporate Christmas parties – which also means it’s one of the first nights to fill up.

If your preferred Thursday has disappeared, consider a Wednesday or even a Tuesday. You may suddenly have a much wider choice of venues, and potentially a better deal.

There is also nothing wrong with an early December party. In fact, many companies deliberately avoid the final couple of weeks before Christmas, when diaries are already packed with client events, school concerts, family commitments and last-minute Christmas shopping.

If December really isn’t working, there is always January. The January company party has become a perfectly respectable alternative, particularly for businesses that have an extremely busy December. Everyone then has something to look forward to after Christmas, venues tend to have better availability, and you aren’t competing with quite so many other companies for the same dates.

Think beyond the traditional Christmas party

You don’t necessarily need a ballroom, turkey dinner, DJ and dance floor. Some of the most successful company Christmas events are much less conventional. You could book a private dining room for a long lunch, take over a restaurant, hire a rooftop with winter views, organise a drinks reception, book an activity venue, arrange a festive afternoon tea or find an unusual space and create something completely bespoke. For smaller teams in particular, opening up the brief can reveal far more possibilities.

Instead of searching for a “Christmas party venue”, we might actually be looking for a restaurant with a private room, a stylish bar with exclusive space or an unusual venue that happens to work brilliantly for Christmas.

Be realistic about your wish list

If you’re booking later in the year, it helps to decide what really matters. Perhaps the location is non-negotiable because everyone needs to get home easily. Perhaps you absolutely need space for 300 people. Perhaps the food needs to be exceptional. Or perhaps the budget is the deciding factor.

Work out your two or three priorities and be more flexible about everything else. Trying to find a venue for 250 people on a particular Friday in December, within five minutes of one specific station, with a three-course dinner, dancing until 1am and a very tight budget is going to make life considerably harder.

Give us a little room to manoeuvre and we can often find options you wouldn’t have considered.

Don’t forget cancellations and late availability

This is one of the advantages of using a venue finder at this stage. We speak to venues all the time and can find out about dates that have unexpectedly become available, late offers and packages that aren’t necessarily obvious from a Google search.

Instead of contacting venue after venue asking:  “Do you have Thursday 10th December?”,  you can give us the brief and let us do the chasing. We’ll check availability, compare suitable venues and come back with realistic options.

The one thing we wouldn’t recommend? Waiting any longer

There’s a difference between “it’s not too late” and “there’s no hurry.”

If you’re planning a company Christmas party and haven’t booked yet, now is the time to get moving. Have your approximate guest numbers, preferred dates, location and an idea of budget ready. If you don’t know your budget yet, that’s fine too – we can help you understand what is realistic.  And don’t spend the next three days opening 47 browser tabs trying to work out which venues might still be available. That’s our job!

Still need a Christmas party venue?

Tell Function Fixers what you’re planning and we’ll search for suitable venues, check availability and put together a handpicked shortlist.

Our Christmas party venue finding service is completely free, and with more than 35 years’ experience finding venues for corporate events, we know where to look when the obvious choices have already gone.

So if somebody has just reminded you that the Christmas party still hasn’t been booked, there’s no need to panic.

But perhaps don’t leave it until November!