In sailing many of the sailing events are run by clubs and their volunteers. A commonly heard remark is: ‘Why should we hire a professional?’
Well first of all: responsibility. If you hire someone to do the job, you have the right to have not only higher expectations but mainly that a professional event manager will take it’s responsibility to live op to your expectations and those of your sponsors. An event manager won’t stop for the day if not all the work is done, long days at the race village is common.
Second of all: event budget experience. An event manager will run trough the budget and will know where you can cut, where is still room for negotiation with suppliers, calculate the number of volunteers that are needed (and not more as volunteers are one of the biggest expenses on the budget) and if important aspects are missing or just not realistic. It will most likely safe you from unwanted financial surprises afterwards and half the costs of the event manager can be earned back already in this stage.
And last but not least: the experience of running an event. An event manager will not run an event without a detailed itinerary. For each possible bottleneck there is already a plan B set-up and an event manager is, well at least Fettje loves to improvise if any problems appear: guests won’t even notice something went different than planned.