Special events industry had grown rapidly in the last five years increasing opportunities for professional events planners (or commonly called as events coordinator or events organizer). If one wants to embark on this career, the three starting points to do are careful planning, market research, and self-evaluation. Here are the basic requirements to become a professional events planner:
Define what type of events and target market you want to focus. Here are some types of events:
- Corporate Events. Trainings, seminars, workshops, exhibits, company Christmas parties, product launchings, promotional events, and other marketing events.
- Private Celebrations Events. Occasions such as weddings, birthdays, anniversaries, holiday occasions like Valentine’s Day, Thanksgiving, Halloween and alike.
- Other Events. Educational tours, graduations, fashion shows, concerts, awards night, beauty pageant, sports events, political rallies
With a wide type of events events, there is a big market for professional events planners.
Define what specific services you want to offer your market. An event planner may offer three different types of services or any of these types depending on skills and capacity to handle the event.
- Full service planning and management. This includes the over-all management of the event from stage one up to the day itself of the event. The client may choose to have a “worry-free” event by just giving their basic preferences and final approval of the details leaving the events planner to do the full management of the event.
- Mid- service management. On this type of service, the client already made the initial planning for the event and hires a professional event planner to execute the plans. On this type of service, the client and the events planner are working closely during the progress of the management.
- On-site service management. This type of service are for clients who prefer to do the full planning and coordination of the event. Events planner is hired only to oversee and monitor the flow of the event on the day itself. Clients with a tight budget may choose this type of service where a minimal fee is charged rather than the other types of services.