My observation is the number of rooms and location determine whether you need meeting rooms and banqueting facilities.
In general a hotel with 80 to 120 rooms do not need banqueting facilities. If it is located near many large offices it may justify the existence of one to two meeting rooms that can handle up to 20 persons with the reception handling all sales inquiry and with no extra staffing.
I have found hotels with 120 rooms to 180 rooms the most difficult size. In terms of staffing other than house keeping the same support staffs in sales, accounting, maintenance and security can easily support 200 to 250 rooms. They are also difficult to fill up without a base load that needs meeting and banqueting support. When you do set up the meeting and banqueting business it can support a hotel with more than 200 rooms.
For the banquet business we found the minimum feasible size the ballroom to be a 500-banquet seating. A 250-seat ballroom is not able to handle weddings in Asian weddings which tends to have 400-500 persons and for larger ones 800-900 persons.
A 1,000-seat makes the banqueting and meeting business large enough and can sustain itself. 4-star or 5-star ballrooms do compete with each other and whoever can provide the necessary service and support wins unless the event definitely needs a five star venue because of the price it charges and similarly with weddings of the children of VVIPs who are status conscious.
Depending on the size of the ballroom you need to support it with meeting rooms seating 25 to 50 persons.
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