Myrtle Beach hosts a lot of conferences, association meetings and company retreats, mostly in resort ballrooms. The venue will offer in-house AV. Sometimes that is fine. Often it is a speaker on a stand and a projector from another decade. Here is what to check before you decide.
Sound
- A system sized for the room and the headcount, not the house speakers in the ceiling. Two hundred people in a ballroom need real speakers on stands at the front and usually delay speakers halfway back.
- Microphones: a wireless handheld for the emcee, a lapel or headset for each presenter, and a handheld for Q&A in the audience. Count your speakers and add one.
- A mixer with a person at it. Someone has to bring the lapel up when the CEO starts quietly and mute the Q&A mic when it gets left on a chair.
- Playback for walk-in music, award stingers and the video someone always brings on a USB stick.
Video
- Screens and projectors bright enough for the room. A ballroom with windows needs a lot more lumens than a dark hotel meeting room. We rent 3,100 and 6,000 lumen projectors for exactly this reason.
- Two screens for a wide room, so nobody on the sides is reading at an angle.
- A confidence monitor facing the presenter, so they stop turning around to look at the slides.
- A switcher when more than one laptop is presenting, so the changeover is a button and not a cable swap in front of the audience.
- A presentation remote. We rent them. Someone always forgets theirs.
Lighting and stage
A presenter on a dark stage looks like a podcast. Two warm wash lights on the stage, a lectern, and uplighting on the room’s walls in your brand color turn a ballroom into an event. If you are shooting video, lighting the stage is not optional.
Recording and streaming
If anyone in the company will watch this later, record it. That means a camera, a feed from the audio board (not the camera’s microphone), and someone running both. Streaming to remote staff adds a reliable internet line, which hotel Wi-Fi is not; ask the venue for a hardwired connection.
Questions to ask the venue
- Can we bring our own AV company, and is there a fee if we do?
- What time can we load in, and is the freight elevator ours or shared?
- Where is the power, and how much?
- Is there a hardwired internet line for streaming?
- Can we rig from the ceiling, or is everything on stands?
We have worked the Hilton, the Marriott at Grande Dunes, the Sheraton at the convention center and the DoubleTree, among others, and we keep notes on each room. Tell us the venue and the date and we will send a plan with a number, usually the same day.
Questions planners ask
Can you work with the hotel’s in-house AV?
Yes. Often the best setup is their screens and our sound and crew, or the reverse. We coordinate directly with their team.
Do you provide a technician for the whole event?
For anything with presenters, yes. A system without an operator is how a meeting ends up with feedback and a dead microphone.
Can we rent the gear and run it ourselves?
For a small meeting, absolutely. Speakers, microphones, projectors and screens are all on the rentals page by the day.
Last updated October 9, 2026.