Awards season starts about now. From October to December, hotel ballrooms up and down the country are set with round tables of ten, a stage at one end and a drinks reception in the room next door.
The front door at an awards dinner is unlike a conference door. Nobody drifts in across a morning. Almost everyone arrives in the forty minutes before the call to dinner, in coats, in groups, and slightly later than the invitation said. Then the whole room needs to be seated at once, because the kitchen and the host are both working to a clock.
It is a short, intense door. A little preparation makes it a pleasant one.
The table host is your best contact
Most awards dinners sell tables, not tickets. A company books a table of ten, and one person, the table host, decides who sits at it. Those names change right up to the day: a director drops out, a client is invited, a colleague swaps in.
So treat the table host as the person who owns their ten names. Ask for them by a firm date, a week out is usual, and make it easy to send changes after that. Each guest goes on the list with their own name and their own pass, not as "Acme guest 7".
When someone still turns up in a colleague's place, handle it the way you would at any event: check in the person at the desk, record the swap, and keep the seat. When a guest sends someone else instead goes through it.
Tell people their table at the door
The seating plan board by the ballroom doors is a tradition, and it causes a crowd every year. Forty people stand in front of one easel looking for their surname while the reception empties around them.
The front door already knows who each guest is. If the table number is on the list next to their name, crew can tell them as they are checked in, or it can be printed on the badge. One sentence at the desk saves a queue at the easel. Keep the board as well for anyone who missed it, but it stops being the only place to look.
Put the cloakroom after the desk
October evenings are cold, and the clocks go back on Sunday 25 October. From then on, guests arrive in the dark with coats, umbrellas and the odd overnight bag.
If the cloakroom sits between the entrance and the desk, its queue becomes your queue. Put it after check-in, with enough room that a line for coats does not reach back to the door. Our piece on running the front door when the weather turns has more on wet arrivals.
Know who is in before the ceremony
At most awards dinners, the people who matter most to the running order are the shortlisted guests and the people presenting the awards. If a winner is not in the room, the host needs to know before the envelope is opened, not after.
Mark shortlisted guests and presenters as their own group. Half an hour before the ceremony, someone looks at who is still only Registered and rings their table host. It is the same habit as checking in speakers before they are needed on stage, applied to an evening.
Give the kitchen a real number
A seated dinner is catered to a number, and the number on the booking is rarely the number in the room. By the time the doors close, the front door knows exactly how many people are Checked in and who is Absent.
Pass that to the banqueting manager before service starts. An empty seat at a sponsor's table is also worth a quiet word with the table host, so it does not sit bare in front of the stage all night.
Count them out at the end
Awards dinners finish late, and guests leave in bursts: some after the last award, more when the bar closes, the rest when the venue asks. Scanning people out at the door gives you a Departed time for each guest and a clear picture of who is still in the building at midnight, which the venue's security team will appreciate. Counting people out, not just in explains why it is worth doing.
A short list for your awards night
- Ask each table host for their guests' names by a firm date.
- Give every guest their own pass, not a table allocation.
- Put the table number on the list and tell guests at the desk.
- Place the cloakroom after check-in, not before it.
- Group shortlisted guests and presenters, and check them before the ceremony.
- Give catering the Checked in number before service.
- Scan guests out as they leave.
If you are also running a Christmas party this year, planning the Christmas party front door in September covers the same evening door at a larger scale.
CheckInHub keeps every table host's guests on one live list, each shown as Registered, Checked in, Departed or Absent, at checkinhub.co.uk.
