What questions should a private event inquiry form ask?

Restaurants, hotels, and venues should build their private event inquiry form around the questions a coordinator asks in every first reply. When the form collects those answers up front, the first reply can be a proposal. For most venues, that means the date, a backup date, the headcount, the type of event, the setup, the space, and a budget range. To find your own list, read your last 50 inquiries and the first replies your team sent to them. Below is a step-by-step walkthrough of each question, how to word it, and how long your form should be.

A generic form usually asks for a name, a date, a headcount, and a message. That gives your coordinator enough to start a conversation, but they still have to chase the guest for the setup, the space, and the budget before they can quote anything. Guests who are shopping around often ghost during that back and forth, and each one takes a real event budget with them. Your team pays for it in time as well, because the people answering those emails are usually the same small group running the events you’ve already booked.

That back and forth is the problem we set out to fix at Dexter. Dexter is an event sales software for restaurants, hotels, and venues to grow event revenue. After New Realm Brewing replaced the generic event form on their website with Dexter, they booked $416,446 more in event revenue, up 29%, from October 2025 to March 2026 against the same months a year earlier. The steps below work on any form, whether or not you ever use Dexter.

The questions to ask, and what each one tells your team

Eight questions cover what most coordinators need for a first proposal. The table shows what each answer tells your team, and the steps that follow explain how to ask for it.

1. Start with what your coordinator asks every time

Your form should collect whatever your coordinator would otherwise have to ask for by email. Put those 50 inquiries next to their first replies and write down each question your team had to send back. The real messages will show you things a meeting about the form would miss. Any question that keeps coming up belongs on the form, and any field nobody ever uses can come off it.

Hotel Chelsea shows what this looks like once the answers arrive up front. Their team sees each lead’s budget, backup dates, and space selection before replying, so they can send a tailored proposal from the start. Their case study also reports that the team surpassed revenue goals.

2. Write each question for a guest who has never booked an event

Word every question the way a guest would say it. The person filling out your form may be planning their first event. Terms your team uses every day, like “F&B minimum”, can stop a guest who has no idea what the phrase means. You could ask what their group plans to spend on food and drinks, which gets you the same answer in words they know. Choices also work better than blank boxes, because a guest can recognize the right option even when they couldn’t have named it.

3. Ask for the date, a backup date, and whether it’s flexible

Ask for all three together, because the first date alone only tells you whether you have a yes or a no. If that date is taken, a backup gives your coordinator something to offer right away instead of opening a new thread. Knowing the guest is flexible helps as well, since it lets you suggest another night that works for both of you.

4. Ask for the headcount, and whether guests will come and go

Ask how many people are coming, then ask whether they’ll all be there at once. A launch party where guests drift in and out may have half the total headcount in the room at any one time, so a space you would rule out on the total may still work on a flow. Without that second question, your team can end up turning down an event you could have hosted. Keep any hard limits, like a fire code capacity, in mind when you set the options the guest can choose from.

5. Ask for the type of event and the setup

The type of event tells your team which menus, packages, and staff to put in the proposal, so give guests a short list of the events you host most. The setup question has three answers to choose from: seated, standing, or both. It matters more than it seems to, because 60 guests take up a room very differently at tables than they do around a bar.

One short question on the form means your coordinator can skip the phone call that so many teams still make to find out the setup. New Realm Brewing’s event managers were making that call before Dexter, and the New Realm Brewing case study has the full before and after.

6. Show your spaces, then ask which one

Show each space with photos and capacities before you ask the guest to choose one. Most guests don’t know your rooms by name, so a dropdown of names asks them to guess, while a photo and a capacity let them picture their event in the room. Their choice then tells your coordinator which room to quote, and it means the guest has already seen what they’re asking about.

Some groups can share events between sister venues. That works when the venues are near each other, your structure allows it, and your team has a reason to do it. If that sounds like your group, you can show those venues in the same place. In Dexter, the guest can see, explore, and select them. Our guide on how to cross-sell sister venues covers the rest of that decision.

7. Ask for budget as a range

Offer budget as a set of ranges, per person or as a minimum, so the guest can pick where they sit without having to name a number. Guests are cagey about budget, as anyone in the events business knows, and many have no idea what an event should cost. A range feels like a much smaller commitment than a blank box with a dollar sign in it.

This is the question to protect if you’re tempted to shorten your form. Once you’re inside your hard limits, whether an event is a fit depends more on budget than on headcount. A range also gives your coordinator enough to start a proposal at the right level, instead of sending a guess and waiting to see how the guest reacts.

8. Decide whether to show your minimums

Some venues show their minimums so guests can self-select before they ever submit. Others keep them for the proposal so their coordinator can talk through the options.

Minimums and starting prices are optional in Dexter, so the form can follow whichever approach you prefer.

9. Send small parties to reservations

Pick a headcount, and have the form send any party under it to your reservations team. Small parties are good business, and they get their answer faster from the people who handle them every day. Before Dexter, groups under 20 at Golden Age Hospitality often landed with the private events team first and had to be rerouted to the reservations team, which slowed the sale. The Golden Age Hospitality case study describes how each inquiry now goes to the right team automatically.

Your own cutoff will depend on your rooms and your team. In Dexter, a party under about 15 guests can go to Resy, OpenTable, Tock, or SevenRooms, and a mid-size party can go to Tripleseat Direct Book or to a person on your reservations team. In either case, Dexter tracks the click.

10. Put catering in front of the guest

If you offer catering, give it its own path on the form, so a guest who wants food at their own location doesn’t have to pick one of your rooms. Asking can also show you demand you didn’t know you had. At Church & State, Dexter’s data showed that over 60% of inquiries were looking for catering, so the venue launched in-house catering as a new revenue stream. The Church & State case study tells the full story.

11. Send a confirmation that repeats back what they submitted

Send every guest an email right after they submit that repeats back their date, headcount, space, and budget. The guest can then spot a mistake before your coordinator builds a proposal around it, and they know the inquiry reached you. Make it clear that this email is a receipt and that the event isn’t booked yet, so nobody assumes their date is being held.

How long an event inquiry form should be

Most event inquiry forms need about eight questions, because that’s what a coordinator usually needs for a first proposal. A good test for each field is whether the answer would change what your team sends back. Ask only what moves the sale, which usually means the budget, deal breakers like beer and wine only or kosher, and hard capacity limits such as fire code or a seated maximum.

A well-chosen question can also save your team time on the leads that were never a fit. Roscioli’s form asks qualifying questions, such as beverage restrictions, that the team used to handle over email. Roscioli NYC saw 23% fewer low-quality leads a month on Dexter while maintaining revenue, according to the Roscioli case study.

How to tell the form is working

A venue should judge their form on event revenue first, because revenue is the measure that matters for any tool they put in front of guests. Compare the same months year over year, the way New Realm Brewing did, since events are seasonal and a comparison with the previous few months can mislead you. Give a new form 2 to 3 months, and agree ahead of time on what you and your owner both want to see from it.

Conversion is the early signal, but it can rise while revenue falls if your mix shifts to smaller events. Whether that’s a problem depends on your business, because some venues thrive on many small bookings and others grow on medium and large events. It also helps to watch how many inquiries reach a first proposal and how often your coordinator still has to ask for the basics. If that form is doing the job and helping you increase your revenue, then don’t change a thing.

How Dexter builds the form

Dexter Intake custom-builds each form for one venue, around your spaces, capacities, event types, starting budgets, and nuances. A sample inquiry on our Tripleseat page shows what that looks like when it lands: a corporate holiday party on December 12, flexible, for 40 guests, with a budget of $4,000 to $6,000, in The Loft, and open to a sister venue. Your coordinator can answer that inquiry with a proposal, because the details they would normally have to ask for are already there.

Dexter works alongside your event management system and never replaces it, although Intake can replace a generic inquiry form. If you use Tripleseat, each lead arrives with its fields mapped, custom fields included.

There are also two more parts of Dexter that help grow your event revenue and your pipeline. AI Search is for the guests who ask ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity where to host their event, and it needs Intake in place. Outreach re-engages your past clients and past leads. Insights is included with all of it.

If you’d like to see the form from the guest’s side, you can try Dexter here. And if you’re already happy with the form you have, our article on whether you need Dexter walks through how to decide if a change is worth it.

FAQ

Related reading

• I already have a form on my website. Why do I need Dexter?
• How fast should a venue respond to a private event inquiry?
• Why qualified event leads change the business
• When to start holiday party outreach, and how far ahead people book
• Dexter customer stories
• Try the Dexter demo form

Sources

• Hotel Chelsea case study
• New Realm Brewing case study
• Tripleseat page
• Church & State case study
• Golden Age Hospitality case study
• Roscioli case study