Dry hire is the hire model where you let the space and nothing else. The client brings the catering, the bar, the staff, the sound system and the furniture, or appoints its own suppliers to bring them. You provide the building, the services that come into it, and the terms under which it can be used.

That sounds like a smaller job than running a catered venue. In practice it moves the workload rather than removing it. Once you stop supplying food and drink, everything the caterer used to absorb — power, water, waste, prep space, access, cleaning, the documentation a corporate client asks for — lands on your side of the line.

This is written for operators deciding whether to let a space on a dry hire basis, and for anyone comparing the different kinds of space that can be let that way: a converted hall, a marquee on their own land, an industrial unit, a hotel room in the off-season, or a relocatable hard-sided structure.

Why clients ask for dry hire

The demand is not driven by price alone. Clients choose dry hire when they have already decided who is doing the rest of the event:

• They have their own caterer. A family restaurant, a cultural or religious caterer, or a chef they have used for years. Venues that only offer in-house catering cannot take that booking at all.
• The menu cannot be produced in your kitchen. Specific cuisine, dietary requirements, or a format that needs equipment your kitchen does not have.
• Budget control. The client buys drink at retail, negotiates directly with suppliers, and sees where the money goes.
• Unusual formats. Markets, photo and film shoots, workshops, brand activations, community events and rehearsals all need a covered space but not a catered one.
• Multi-day use. A three-day event with one catered dinner in the middle is a poor fit for a per-head contract.

For the operator the appeal is straightforward: fewer staff hours, no kitchen, no food cost, no per-head negotiation, and a space that can be sold for event types you have no interest in catering. The trade-off is that the space has to stand on its own. If the building is not usable without your team doing everything, dry hire will expose that quickly.

What a dry hire space has to provide

Before advertising dry hire, an operator should be able to answer every item below in writing. Clients and their suppliers will ask, and vague answers cost bookings.

• Power. What supply comes into the site, how much load it carries, where the outlets are, and whether a caterer can bring a generator or a distro board. A catering line, a bar, a lighting rig and a band can add up quickly, and a single domestic socket is not an answer.
• Water and waste. Where clean water comes from, where grey water and refuse go, and who empties them.
• Toilets. What is fixed, what has to be brought in, and what the local authority expects for the type and size of event. Ratios differ between jurisdictions and event types, so the requirement is a question for your authority, not a rule of thumb.
• Back of house. A catering team needs somewhere to work — prep surfaces, a sink, refrigeration, a service route to the room, and a place for vehicles to stand while they unload.
• Access and set-up window. How close a van or truck can get, gate widths, overhead cables, and how many hours before and after the event the client's suppliers are allowed on site. Set-up access is often the difference between a smooth booking and an argument.
• Floor and load capacity. A dry hire client may bring a dance floor, staging, bar counters, a catering line and heavy tables. What matters is point load, not average load, and the answer should come from documentation rather than from a supplier's summary.
• Lighting and climate. An uninsulated space is a heating problem in winter and a cooling problem in summer, and the client pays for the fuel. Say plainly what the space can and cannot hold.
• Noise, curfew and exclusivity. Music cut-off times, whether the site has other users, and whether a booking gets the space exclusively.
• Cleaning and turnaround. Who resets the space between bookings, what the condition standard is, and what is charged if the client leaves it otherwise.
• Accessibility. Step-free routes, accessible toilets and parking. Increasingly a condition of corporate and public bookings.
• Documentation. Fire arrangements, structural information, insurance certificates and method statements. Corporate clients, councils and larger venues ask for these as a matter of course.

How dry hire is priced

There is no universal rate card, and any operator who quotes one is guessing. What is consistent across markets is the set of things that move the number:

• Exclusivity. A space let to one client is worth more than the same space shared with three others.
• Day of the week and season. Friday and Saturday are priced differently from Tuesday, and midweek dry hire is often the only way to fill a calendar that weddings have not taken.
• Set-up days. Dry hire bookings usually need the space before the event. Charging for the set-up day, rather than bundling it, keeps the comparison honest.
• Utilities. Whether power and water are included or passed through at cost.
• Risk allocation. Deposit, cleaning retention, damage terms and whether the client must carry its own public liability cover.
• Unlocking and supervision. If the client's suppliers need the space open at odd hours, that is somebody's time.
• Insurance. Confirm with your broker how dry hire, and any structure you own, is treated under your policy before you take the first booking.

The one number to avoid is a payback promise. Hire income depends on your local rates, occupancy and the days your space is genuinely bookable, and nobody can forecast that for you.

The space types that can be let on dry hire

Community, village and church halls. The original dry hire spaces. Cheap to hire out, often with kitchens and toilets already in place. Limited by age, layout, capacity and adjacent users — no late music, no exclusivity, and often a booking committee rather than one decision-maker.

Blank-canvas industrial or warehouse space. A converted unit gives high ceilings, drive-in access and real load capacity. It needs services, toilets, heating and an interior built before anyone books it, and change of use may need consent.

A marquee or clear span tent on land you own. A column-free covered area at a lower capital cost than construction. The costs sit elsewhere: a build and a strike that take days and a crew, no insulation, a floor that has to be added, ground that must take stakes or ballast, and a calendar that depends on the forecast. Services — power, water, toilets, catering access — are usually temporary as well.

Hotel and conference space. Usually wet hire with in-house catering, because the catering is where the margin is. Where dry hire is offered it tends to be off-peak, restricted on supplier choice, and priced to protect the food and beverage revenue.

Modular and prefabricated buildings. Delivered in sections and assembled on site, with a real floor, walls and services. Once installed they need foundations and connections, and they are treated as permanent structures for planning purposes — relocating one later is a construction project, not a move.

Relocatable hard-sided structures. A small category of suppliers builds towable units with their own floor, insulated walls and roof, lighting and power distribution, which can be let on one site and moved to another between bookings. These are the option that changes what "dry hire space" can mean for an operator who does not want to build.

What to compare before you commit

Strip the marketing away and every option is judged on the same handful of numbers:

• Capital per square metre of space you can actually let, and how many days a year that space can be sold.
• Crew minutes per booking, including the set-up day clients always need.
• Weather exposure, and how much revenue depends on a forecast.
• Ground and services requirements — whether you can work on hard standing, and who pays to bring power and water in.
• Whether you own the land, and what happens if the site is sold, leased or refused consent.
• Whether the asset can serve two sites in the same month.
• Who carries the compliance burden: licensing, fire arrangements, accessibility, structural documentation.
• The year-three position, not the month-one price.

One option: an expandable event trailer

For operators who want a hard-sided, insulated, relocatable space they can let on a dry hire basis, one option among several is an expandable event trailer.

The structure is built around hydraulic side expansion rather than a push/pull manual system. Once it is on site and levelled, two people can complete the full expansion in roughly 30 minutes, which removes the multi-day build and strike that a fabric structure carries. Usable open area runs from approximately 96 to 235 m² depending on model, with an interior height of around 3.8 m and above, and a transport width of approximately 2.55 m depending on configuration. Walls and roof use 50 mm polyurethane (PU) insulated panels, which keep the interior cool in summer and warm in winter and reduce air-conditioning load and running costs — the reason a space like this can be let in the months when outdoor structures cannot. Interior materials are B2 fire-retardant rated, and the roof and expansion joints are weather-sealed so wind-driven moisture stays out. The frame is national-standard Q235 and Q345 manganese square steel, with a distributed roof load capacity of approximately 300 kg/m² depending on final configuration. CE documentation for the structure is available; confirm what your own market requires. Where wind is a factor, treat any figure as the manufacturer's experience-based estimate, confirm it for your project, and fix the unit according to the anchoring and tie-down method required for the site.

Pricing sits in the range of USD 59,000–140,000 depending on size and configuration, quoted per project, with the applicable price and delivery terms confirmed in the quotation. That is a different entry cost from a marquee or a converted unit, and it is not the right first asset for an operator whose bookings are small. What it changes is the shape of the calendar: the space arrives with its own floor, walls, lighting and power distribution, so dry hire does not depend on the ground taking stakes, on a crew being booked days ahead, or on the forecast. Operators comparing let-able space against the alternatives can look at the expandable mobile event hall range as one of the options on the list.

Before you advertise dry hire

Five things worth settling first:

1. Decide the hire model before the asset. Dry hire, wet hire and a hybrid model each need different facilities, insurance and staff. Buying first and choosing the model later is how operators end up with a space they cannot let.
2. Write the split of responsibilities into the agreement. Utilities, cleaning, damage, access hours, noise cut-off, catering access and who clears the space afterwards.
3. Ask your authority, not a forum. Whether a temporary or relocatable structure needs consent, how long it may stand, and what fire and accessibility standards apply, are local decisions.
4. Test one season before scaling. Measure which days filled, which enquiries you turned down, and what each booking actually cost in crew hours.
5. Ask what the option looks like in year three. A space that cannot be let midweek, in winter, or on hard standing is expensive in the third year even when it looked cheap in the first.

To compare a relocatable hard-sided space against the other options on your list, contact [email protected], message WhatsApp: +86 186 6381 3961, or review the range at www.lgloader.com.

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