Everyone thinks organising events is easy. After all, we’ve all organised a birthday get-together, a holiday, a hen doo, or maybe even a wedding. Before you start, you think it’s easy – everyone does it – it must be! We, as humans, usually default to what everyone else does and put the emphasis on the logistics because that’s all that matters, right?

That is, until you get halfway through and realise: we’re dealing with people here. Not everyone wants the same kind of thing from their holiday, or has the same budget for a trip. Or your future mother-in-law wants to come to the hen doo, meaning you have to tone down your plans to suit everyone. Suddenly, “just booking it” doesn’t feel so simple.

You only have to look at the Waterstones chaos from their BookFest event at a store in Piccadilly. Attendees describing it as disorganised and unsafe, with some joking they had “survived” the event while one deemed it “hell on earth.” Videos showed huge queues, bottlenecks on staircases, and crowds spilling out onto the street. Logistics were clearly planned, but the human factor – crowd flow, capacity, comfort – wasn’t fully accounted for.

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