Venue hire
Why venue capacity numbers are almost always wrong
Team Selgars · · 1 min read
Three different numbers
Standing capacity, seated capacity and sleeping capacity are wildly different, and venues quote whichever is largest. A space that holds a hundred standing might seat sixty and sleep twenty-eight.
Always ask which number you are being given, and for the other two.
The bathroom ratio is the real limit
Most residential venues hit their true ceiling on bathrooms long before beds. One bathroom per six people is workable. One per ten is a source of low-grade misery that nobody will mention in feedback but everyone will feel.
And the wet weather number
The stated capacity usually assumes the group can spread outdoors. Ask: if it rains all weekend, where does everyone go, and how many people fit there comfortably? That number is the one your event should be sized to.
Our own honest numbers
Thirty indoors, sixty in the glamping tents, and DIY camping for another hundred to two hundred, with a maximum of three hundred on site. Those are deliberately separated rather than added into one impressive figure.