SAN FRANCISCO, July 27, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Two-thirds of wedding-focused venues have no dedicated staff scheduling tool, leaving event calendar coordination across weddings, corporate events, and parties, and the risk of double-booking, to manual workarounds.
HoneyBook, the leading client flow management platform for venues, has released its latest findings, revealing that half of event venue operators host nine or more events during a typical peak month, often with no single system to maintain efficient workflows. The 2026 edition of the HoneyBook Venue Focus Study found that nearly all event venue operators (96.9%) say they lack the tools they need to significantly increase event volume.
Poignantly, nearly two-thirds of venue operators still build banquet event orders by hand, relying on spreadsheets or word processors, rather than using specialized, integrated software to manage and organize workflows around venue bookings. To truly scale their businesses, respondents say they need staff scheduling integration, a client self-service portal, automated lead qualification, and a consolidated all-in-one platform.
Top takeaways from the survey:
- Over 60% of venues primarily used to host weddings actually work with multiple types of events, including parties and corporate gatherings. As a result, operators have to deal with significant complexity in terms of reorganizing their venues for different event types, timing and pricing.
- Two-thirds of survey respondents who manage wedding-focused venues do not have a centralized platform for managing their staff schedules. Instead, 46.4% rely on personal calendar apps, while 41% stick to spreadsheets and 38.3% resort to group text messages.
- 63.3% of venue managers create Banquet Event Orders (BEOs) themselves using word processors, spreadsheets, or no BEO at all, as opposed to generating them automatically through their booking software. Only 26.8% auto-generate BEOs from their booking software.
- Most venue operators cite revenue expansion as a priority for this year, rather than saving money by reducing costs. To do this, 27.2% of venue managers say they want more high-profile event bookings, while 25.8% aim to bump up their inquiry-to-booking ratios and 23.7% want ways to increase occupancy rates during quieter times of the year.
An Easy System for Venue Managers to Organize Bookings
“Our data shows that most venue operators are highly growth-driven, looking for opportunities to scale revenue while delivering a polished client experience instead of reducing headcounts or budgets,” said Tal Gonenne, Product Manager of HoneyBook for Venues. “On the other hand, when they’re juggling so many event bookings and back-to-back timelines, manual tracking across several apps that aren’t built for these purposes gets challenging.”
“With HoneyBook’s platform, we aim to address these needs by letting venue managers automate repetitive administrative tasks, so they can focus on growing their business, filling their calendars, optimize their workflows, and executing their events flawlessly.”
The Best Way to Manage Calendars When Hosting Multiple Event Types for the Same Venue
For venue managers who are running popular spaces, juggling nine or more events a month, finding a specialized tool to manage those bookings and keep them organized is key to running a smooth business operation at scale.
HoneyBook’s data shows that administrative workflows and property tours can become major bottlenecks, with venue operators saying that scheduled tours with prospective clients are a major time drain.
This friction is shared across venue types, too, as tour scheduling ranks as the top workflow frustration for both emerging wedding venues and established wedding venues, suggesting the problem doesn’t ease as a business matures.
Adopting centralized workflow automations and self-service options for booking can go a long way towards eliminating administrative bottlenecks, without losing the intimate and personalized relationships that are so important to clients.
Keeping Venue Bookings in One Place to Avoid Double-Booking
Multi-use properties that host a combination of weddings, parties and corporate events in the same space demand full calendar visibility.
HoneyBook’s study revealed that 81.4% of wedding venues also cater to social events such as birthdays, reunions and showers, while 74.5% also host corporate functions such as conferences, holiday parties and offsites.
For these venues, it makes sense to manage all of their bookings through a single, centralized platform so they don’t double book a date. Comprehensive platforms like HoneyBook for Venues can also synchronize client communications, team schedules and digital contracts to ensure that growth-focused venue operators can effectively manage capacity and fill up more of their off-peak dates.
About the Study
HoneyBook Venue Focus Study, 2026. Findings are based on a survey of N=455 U.S. venue owners and operators. Figures drawn from sub-samples are noted as such where cited.
About HoneyBook
HoneyBook is the leading client flow management platform that makes it easy for independent business owners to sell and deliver their services online. Offering powerful tools for communication, contracts, invoicing, payments, and more, the platform puts independent professionals in control of their process and client experience. HoneyBook is trusted by over 100,000 service-based businesses in the United States and Canada that have booked more than $10 billion in business on the platform. The company has offices in San Francisco and Tel Aviv, with remote staff worldwide. Learn more at HoneyBook.com.
Contact
Dan Edelstein
InboundJunction
[email protected]
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