How to plan,
create and execute a successful event that engages, innovates and ensures ROI
and ROE.
SCHILLER PARK, Illinois ─ Great event experiences at your venue generate loyalty and drive repeat business. These immersive environments combine the “wow” groups demand with the backstage “how” planners require to continually grow client satisfaction by exceeding expectations. Complex and creative, stand-out experiences in today’s market are best imagined, designed and executed with a full-service production partner you can trust.
With more than 85 years of expertise, Encore has event production down to a science. Our global knowledge base paired with client-by-client flexibility produce transformative events for your guests that build an emotional connection, increasing your venue’s return on investment (ROI) and return on experience (ROE).
Your business is all about people. Creating moments where people feel considered, heard and deeply taken care of is essential. The production partner you choose should represent an extension of your brand, one that prioritizes the development of the hospitality mindset in addition to offering state-of-the-art solutions. It’s important to ask yourself: Do you have that chemistry and those shared core values with the partner you’re considering?
What you want in a production partner
When planners are shopping for venues, your event technology capabilities and infrastructure catapult you above the competition, according to the “2025 Encore Planner Pulse Report.” Once that business is on your books, your production partner needs to be the catalyst to personalize the event experience through a consultative sales approach. This reinforces the value of doing business with your brand and builds confidence that you’ve made the right buying decision. The perfect chemistry — and what keeps customers coming back — is how they’re treated before, during and after the event.
Conversely, a partner who doesn’t regularly invest in the proper elements by updating their technology inventory may be more likely to deliver the same cookie-cutter proposals to all their customers. Treating these important relationships like transactions not only limits the impact of true collaboration, it can also hurt your venue’s reputation and drive business away.
When you partner with Encore, you gain a full-service event solutions team who acts as an extension of your brand. We combine unmatched expertise with white-glove service to support your venue’s reputation for excellence and deliver the consistent results your customers crave. Our team members receive intensive training in customer excellence, safety and technology. In 2025 alone, we’ve invested $75 million in our technology inventory.
Leveraging our investment in cutting-edge training and technology enables Encore to offer customized support for events of any size and type in more than 2,100 venues worldwide. That’s one of the reasons Encore was named a 2025 Official Event Solutions Brand by Forbes Travel Guide.
The science of crafting successful events
Crafting exceptional events begins with a proven formula that blends hospitality, creativity, innovative technology and a high standard of production expertise. But success isn’t just about utilizing the right tools; it’s about the collaborative nature of the relationship, perfect synthesis of shared values and a mutual commitment to delivering outstanding results.
The right production partner for your venue should offer a dedicated team with local resources and event technology tailored to your needs, like the global network of 70 regional warehouses Encore possesses.
The theoretical yield of creating consistently engaging experiences speaks for itself. For event planners, it builds their confidence in your venue’s ability to meet their needs, demonstrating your reliability and bolstering their loyalty. The hospitality mindset is crucial to creating loyalty that lasts and helps to ensure guests and event participants are engaged at every stage of the event experience.
When your partner takes the time to understand the business drivers of each event and help the customer bring their vision to life on time and within budget, that directly influences both bottom-line results and experience-based satisfaction — for your venue, event customers and their guests.
At Encore, we survey our customers after every event to ensure we are delivering a consistently high level of service and fulfilling our promise to customize the event experience. We are proud to report that our year-over-year (YoY) overall satisfaction scores have increased each year over the past three years. Encore performance across all events improved in 2025, with the most significant gains for events with revenues of $50,000-$99,000. Our YoY value for price paid also increased by three points this year.
Dedicated to innovation: creating transformative experience
Innovation is the driving force behind events that leave a lasting impression. We believe experimentation is the key to success. By testing new ideas and creative solutions in collaboration with attuned acknowledgment and integration of customer needs, we continue to set the standard of engagement. For example, we keep detailed event histories of every one of the 400,000-plus annual events we produce. This information is shared with our global teams to strengthen relationships with repeat customers. Wherever their events take them, we are there to help them build from the foundation of past successes; they never have to start from scratch.
Our team brings deep expertise and hands-on experience to tackle challenges and turn bold concepts into reality. Innovation isn’t just a buzzword — it drives business and a willingness to engage in partnership. That’s why we provide tools to help customers make informed buying decisions, like the interactive Event Solutions Explorer that makes it easier for them to visualize different in-room options at various price points. When your partner takes the time to understand the business drivers of each event and help the customer bring their vision to life on time and within budget, that directly influences both bottom-line results and experience-based satisfaction — for your venue, event customers and their guests. In other words, your event technology partner and your venue become a binary compound of success.
Ultimately, you want to find an event production partner with the right mix of elements to increase ROI and ROE that produces the perfect chemical reaction to transform your event business. Encore is here to bring event science to life. Our collaborative approach delivers unmatched technology, inventive end-to-end event solutions and white-glove service that helps you attract new business, build loyalty and keeps customers coming back for more.
Madeleine Bart is Vice President, Global Brand Customer Marketing, Encore
The views and opinions expressed in this content do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Hotel Investment Today by Northstar or Northstar Travel Group and its affiliated companies.