When you host an event at a conference venue, you hire security guards. If you hold an event in a bar and restaurant, you hire bouncers. What happens when you hold an event at your hospital's multi-purpose center? Do you hire an event security company to manage a few guards, or do you hire a few bouncers? Here is how to decide.

The Profile of the Guest List

If you have several high-profile guests from the community and city coming to the event, then you hire security guards. Security guards are trained to handle virtually any situation, including shooters, attempted abductions, and hostage situations. Just about anything can happen when you have millionaires in attendance at your hospital charity event, so security guards it is.

Open Bar and/or Heavy Drinkers

If your guest list is not going to be that high-profile, and you have an open bar, bouncers are a good idea. If you know that there are some hospital staff that are heavy drinkers as well, then having bouncers at the event is also a good idea. If anyone starts getting loud or has a problem, the bouncers can help remove these people from the event and direct these people to a quiet area to calm down or wait until they are a little less inebriated. (Security guards do not manage these situations unless the intoxicated person has assaulted someone else at the party, which is rare.)

A Major Social Event of the Year

If your hospital sponsors an annual celebration for a particular reason, and it is a celebration that everyone in the community knows about, you are going to want security guards and bouncers. The security guards inside the party can keep everyone safe, while the bouncers can stand by the entrances to the party and keep uninvited guests out. There should be at least two bouncers to every access door to allow for restroom breaks, smoke breaks (if smoking is allowed on the premises), and to assist the security guards inside as needed.

As for the security guards, it is a good idea to have one guard for each ten guests. This does not seem like much, but when you consider that that means twenty security guards for every two hundred guests, you have a lot of extra bodies in the room to protect people. If some guests want to bring their own security guards, that is fine, too. 

To find out more, contact a security services company like Protection Plus.