How Hospitality Venues Can Capitalise on Melbourne’s Major Events

A practical, experience-led guide for restaurants, bars and venues looking to turn major events into bookings and revenue.

If you work in hospitality in Melbourne, you hear the same advice on repeat.

“Melbourne’s major events calendar is a huge opportunity. There are visitors everywhere. You just need to capture a slice of it!”.

And while that can be true, it often feels frustratingly out of reach. You can walk through the CBD during a major event, surrounded by tourists, and still end the night wondering why none of them came through your doors.

I started my career delivering marketing for hatted restaurants in the Melbourne CBD. From there, I moved into major events, spending several years at the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival, before working within the industry development team at Visit Victoria.

That means I have seen this from every angle. From the pressure of filling seats on a Friday night, to programming city-wide festivals, to understanding how tourism bodies build itineraries and move visitors through the city.

What I can say with confidence is this. The venues that benefit from Melbourne’s major events are not lucky. They prepare for peak periods like March with focus, expertise and long lead times.

This guide breaks down the core principles of working successfully during major events season for hospitality venues.

Why major events bring a different customer

Major events do not just bring more of your usual, culturally aware dining customers into Melbourne. They bring a different market altogether. A mass market. A visiting market. One you are unlikely to be tailoring your business to for the other nine months of the year. 

Event visitors are:

• Time-poor and schedule-driven

• Often unfamiliar with the city

• Making fast decisions, usually on their phone

• Willing to spend, but only if things feel easy

It is also worth remembering that many visitors from overseas will not be native English speakers. This means clarity matters even more than creativity.

Simple language, clear menus, straightforward pricing and user-friendly booking pathways make a real difference. If people feel uncertain or confused, they move on.

Understanding how this audience behaves and how it differs from your usual trade will underpin whether your major events strategy succeeds or fails.

Start with the tourism ecosystem (this is a non-negotiable)

This is the part many hospitality businesses underestimate.

If you don’t have a working relationship with your local tourism body, you are not on the map. Quite literally.

Tourism organisations produce and distribute maps, itineraries, visitor guides, digital listings and recommendations that shape where visitors go, eat and spend. These resources are used by visitor centres, concierges, media, trade partners and event organisers.

If your venue is not part of that ecosystem, it is invisible in those channels.

From experience, when tourism bodies are under pressure during major events, they rely on venues they already know and trust. If you are not known, you are not recommended.

At a minimum, ensure you have:

• An up-to-date ATDW listing

• Accurate opening hours, menus and imagery

• Clear positioning that explains why your venue is a must-do Melbourne experience

PR agencies can help get you on the radar, but it is not essential to have an agency. If your offering is strong and genuinely represents Melbourne well, you can absolutely build direct tourism relationships and networks yourself.

Work directly with hotels and accommodation providers

Tourism bodies matter but hotel relationships are also incredibly powerful during major events.

Concierges and desk-staff are under pressure to recommend venues that are walkable, reliable, and easy to book. A simple pre-event email, menu PDF or booking link sent to nearby hotels can drive meaningful bookings without paid advertising.

This is low-effort, high-return work.

If you can, consider hosting a concierge dinner or small familiarisation event a month or so before major event season kicks off. Being top of mind when concierges are making daily recommendations can make a tangible difference and these relationships compound over time.

Be visible from the street

Melbourne loves a hidden venue. That mystique works beautifully for locals. During major events though, it can work against you.

I have said this to many owner operators over the years. There is no point being so hard to find that your venue is empty.

Event visitors will not hunt you down. They will choose what they can see and understand quickly. Clear signage, windows, subtle street cues or small on-street activations can make a noticeable difference.

I am not suggesting you change your site if you are naturally tucked away, but consider simple options like an A-frame, temporary signage, working with neighbouring retailers on directional signage, or activating any available street frontage. If you can offer street-front seating during busy periods, even better.

It just needs to be obvious that you exist and that you are open.

Choose the right events and plan early

One of the biggest mistakes I see is venues trying to leverage every major event, then scrambling to plan promotions or activations a week or two out.

You do not need to be part of every major event. Instead, focus on the ones that genuinely align with your brand, your customer and your location.

For some venues, that might be the Australian Open or major football fixtures. For others, it could be cultural festivals such as Melbourne Food and Wine Festival, Melbourne Fashion Festival or RISING.

The strongest activations I have seen were planned months in advance, not pulled together at the last minute. They usually feature a unique, authentic activation or experience that is thoughtfully linked to the major event’s theme and audience.

For this kind of planning to work, lead time matters. Start thinking about events in the next quarter, not next week.

Adapt your offer to event visitor behaviour

Event visitors move through the city very differently to locals. You can see this clearly in how CBD foot traffic behaves during major events.

So why do so many venues continue with business as usual?

An offer designed for corporate CBD workers or suburban couples on a Saturday night may not meet the needs of visiting tourists. Event visitors are time-poor, unfamiliar with the city and often making quick decisions around schedules they did not design.

I am not suggesting you compromise your brand or what you do well as a core business. But you do need to meet the customer where they are.

That could mean adjusting trading hours, introducing a pre-fixe or express menu, or creating a limited-time offer aligned to the event.

Realistically, business growth rarely comes from attracting the same customers you already have. It comes from understanding and catering to new markets.

Use major event season to audit your discoverability

Major event season is the perfect time to do a quick but honest audit of your online visibility. Put yourself in the shoes of a tourist researching food and drink in a new city.

Start by typing in the same search queries they would use.

If someone searches for “Italian restaurant Melbourne”, “best bars Fitzroy” or “where to eat near the Australian Open”, do you appear? And if you do, are you positioned as a strong and credible option?

This is how tourists search. It is also increasingly how AI tools and GPT-style assistants build itineraries, drawing from Google, Maps, directories, reviews, and trusted third-party coverage.

If your venue does not show up in these places, you are far less likely to be recommended.

This is where PR and online reputation quietly do a lot of heavy lifting. Online coverage is often far more valuable than print when it comes to discoverability. If you are not sure where to start, a PR professional can help.

Control your commercial settings during peak periods

More people does not automatically mean more profit.

Major events put pressure on your venue, your team and your margins, which is why firmer commercial settings are not just appropriate, they are necessary. Minimum spends, deposits, defined seating windows and clear cancellation terms all help protect service quality and profitability. Hotels and airlines do this instinctively. Hospitality should too.

If you are activating off-site, running a pop-up, or offering a different event-led experience in your venue, you must run a simple P&L.

It does not need to be complex. A basic spreadsheet tracking event-related revenue against staffing, food, logistics and overheads is enough. It is very easy to get caught up in the excitement of a major event, staff generously, and only realise afterwards that you have lost money on the activation.

You should not expect to get rich from events, but you certainly should not be losing money.

This also comes back to how well you are using your booking and reservation systems. During peak periods, actively manage seating times, table configurations and availability to maximise capacity and revenue. Do not lose money simply because your systems are not optimised.

Embed yourself off-site if capacity allows

If I were leading marketing for a hospitality group today, one of my first priorities would be pitching for opportunities to secure activations or catering presences within Melbourne’s major events calendar.

I know the immediate response. You are stretched. You do not have the staff. You do not have the time.

So think differently.

Use a different workforce. Simplify the menu. Partner or collaborate with another operator and share the workload. These opportunities allow you to take your brand to new markets at a moment when people are primed to try and sample new food and cuisines.

There is also a brand benefit that should not be underestimated. Aligning with a major Melbourne event helps position your venue as part of the city’s dining fabric, not just another restaurant.

Melbourne Food and Wine Festival is an obvious starting point. With hundreds of activations across a concentrated period, it showcases the breadth of Victoria’s food and drink scene. You might pitch for sponsorship, secure placement within a headline event, or develop your own experience through umbrella or fringe programming.

Cut-through comes from a clear point of difference, something genuinely newsworthy, and a strong connection to Melbourne’s cultural identity. This is where PR thinking and hospitality excellence come to the fore.

Cover your costs properly, grow your brand, leave with new customers and an expanded database, and call that a win. Growth comes from reaching new audiences, not treating every activation as a short-term profit exercise.

There is still time

Melbourne’s major events season has only just begun, and it will continue well into April. If you are reading this thinking we have missed the boat, you haven’t.

The biggest wins during major events rarely come from last-minute gimmicks. They come from getting the fundamentals right. Visibility, clarity, commercial discipline and being easy to choose when visitors are in the city and ready to spend.

You do not need to do everything in this guide. You just need to do a few things well, with intention. Pick the opportunities that make sense for your venue, your team and your brand, and focus there.

And if you are unsure where to start, or want a second set of eyes on your tourism or major events strategy, that is exactly the work I do.

From helping venues position themselves within the tourism ecosystem, to tightening offers, partnerships and visibility during peak periods, a short conversation can often unlock quick, practical wins.

Major events season is underway. There is still time to make it work for you.

If you would like support, feel free to get in touch.