Skift Take
Is the meeting and events space on the cusp of a distribution revolution? There's still a ton of work to be done, but signs are promising if hotel chains become more engaged.
Event technology has helped revolutionize the process of planning a meeting along with the experience for attendees.
The space is crowded with competing products and platforms, however, adding an additional layer of complexity for planners.
In our new Event Tech Evolution Interview Series, we're talking to leaders at the companies defining the future of the event technology space with an eye on the trends and disruptions to come. You can read all of the articles in the series here.
As event technology has become more complicated, it's also simplified many established practices for meeting planners.
"People are looking to you to be the expert in something and then they want to use other experts in other areas," said Ron Shah, founder and CEO of event technology platform Bizly. "I'm not going to say Bizly is going to be expert of every single thing in meetings. We are really, really good at booking meetings, sourcing venues, and helping with other aspects so we want to create a provider network that allows you to plug into other things you love using."
Bizly lets meeting planners avoid the annoyances of the traditional request for proposal process with a digital platform that allows them to price and book event space for small meetings online. As many different platforms compete for marketshare, planners will likely look to combine their favorite services as they design and plan an event.
Skift interviewed Shah for the first entry in our Event Tech Evolution Interview Series. Skift spoke to Shah about complexity in the event technology space and how the proliferation of options from planners is leading to a more flexible, and connected, future.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Skift: A big part of the headache of planning a meeting is finding the right space at the right price, but the goals of a hotel don't always match up with the needs of an event. How are event tech companies trying to fix this problem?
Ron Shah: How are the hotel brands looking at the world? I think that they all recognize that some change is needed.
What the industry suffers from is that there's not a global distribution system for the event space. There's no way to plug into something and know when space is available and what the price is. The reason is simple: the hotels need to maximize revenue because every meeting has guest rooms attached to it. They don't want to make it visible because if they sell it to someone fi
