You’ve spent the last couple of years learning how to use AI, upskilling your teams, sharpening your processes and creating efficiencies. You’re comfortable in understanding how AI works for your business, but do you know how your clients and customers are using AI?
Artificial intelligence isn’t just reshaping event experiences, it’s transforming how planners discover, compare and shortlist suppliers and venues. For event professionals on the supply side, understanding this shift is now essential to staying visible, competitive and relevant.
Chapter’s MD Neil Kent explores the key areas to understand.
AI is accelerating the discovery process
Event planners now use AI to search across thousands of venues and suppliers in seconds, filtering options by capacity, location, style, sustainability, and AV capabilities. They can then filter by budget and USPs, analysing reviews at the same time, whilst AI filters and ranks its recommendations. This shift from manual to algorithmic search makes your digital footprint and data accuracy more important than ever.
Those with the clearest information published, both on their own channels and via citations and mentions in the media, will be favoured by AI.
Event bookers are using natural language voice search
Planners and event bookers can describe their requests in everyday language, for example “I need a London venue for 150 people, budget of £10k, event date late March, with audiovisual included in the price”, and AI filters and interprets more flexibly than traditional filters.
Clear, machine-readable information will help you get shortlisted. Look for opportunities to explain your value proposition in context, such as interviews with online trade magazines.
AI assistants are becoming gatekeepers
Planners are increasingly utilising AI assistants to compile venue lists, recommend suppliers, estimate budgets, and draft RFPs. Research from the 2025 Cvent Planner Sourcing Report found that 54% of event planners are already using AI tools during the venue-sourcing process, with 30% of event teams implementing AI solutions within the past year. This indicates a surge in adoption, rather than slow and steady growth. A whopping 80% of event organisers told a GlueUp report that AI improves outcomes.
Only AI‑optimised information that you have published will be pulled upon during this process. We recommend focussing your marketing and publicity efforts in places where you can communicate your key messages in full conversational context, for example interviews and profile features.
Real-time availability and dynamic pricing
AI-enabled platforms can sync calendars, monitor demand (peak days and seasons, for example) and update availability and pricing quickly, reducing guesswork and delays. This means that you might be in the dynamic pricing game without even knowing it.
Being clear about your pricing – and the variations if it changes seasonally – will be easier for the LLMs to interpret. Similarly, for hospitality businesses, we advise making menus AI-readable, with clear font, white space between items, and a clear pricing layout with a currency symbol. This may make you wince if you’re designers at heart, but there are ways to keep this on brand and to not dilute from your aesthetic too far. Save the beautiful font choices for the printed versions (although these are also likely to be photographed and uploaded to reviews read by AI, but one step at a time…).
AI is increasing the need for transparency
Missing information gets highlighted by AI tools. Displaying standardised, detailed, and consistent information boosts your chances of being selected. I’ll share a future post about the importance of key messages; however, this is why it’s absolutely crucial to be clear and, at times, repetitive in your choice of language. Your customers need to be reassured that you know what you’re talking about, all the time, regardless of where they see it.
Working with the media to explore topics relevant to your service offering allows you to explain your core proposition and USPs to a trusted third party that will validate your opinion, as well as share the messages. The more places that AI finds your content, the more it trusts you.
Personalisation is the new norm
AI helps planners find suppliers that match event type, style, demographic, and brand. Your content should signal your strengths clearly and, if you have a niche, these should come across in case studies and key messages.
If you regularly provide a venue or services to the financial services sector, for example, talk about the challenges faced by the industry when it comes to bringing events together. Likewise, if you excel at charity events, share information that speaks to your audience; celebrate milestones, generate awareness for the cause, deliver an experience with empathy and maximise fundraising opportunities.
Being ‘AI‑friendly’ is becoming a competitive advantage
AI‑optimised venues receive higher‑quality enquiries and typically have shorter sales cycles.
What used to take weeks (discovery → RFP → negotiation → contract), clients are now expecting to happen in days or even hours, thanks to AI and automation.
All of this is largely positive for workflow and productivity. Your job as a venue marketer is to ensure that you are feeding AI the information it learns from and serves up to clients.
To summarise, review your content and adapt it to make your information structured and complete, optimising for clarity. Showcase visual and immersive assets in case studies and media articles that are targeted to your customer and specialism. Be crystal clear on what makes you unique and keep your digital presence up to date with your key messages.
AI isn’t replacing human connection — it’s reshaping how planners find you. Those who adapt will become more discoverable, relevant, influential, and successful.
To discuss completing an AI Visibility Audit with Chapter’s team of sector-specialist consultants, click here to get in touch.