Event management platform Aventri and online venue marketplace VenueBook announced a partnership Wednesday that would make the latter's 1,500 listed nontraditional venues available to Aventri's Strategic Venue Sourcing users. Aventri clients would be able to book those additional spaces directly, though the process will require a venue's acceptance before a booking is finalized. Users would be able to access the VenueBook spaces and booking engine through their Aventri dashboard. Aventri plans to complete the integration and make VenueBook's services available by the third quarter.
"We believe nontraditional venues will continue to grow in popularity as far as events are concerned, or events within events, which clients need visibility into as much as into the main event," Aventri VP of channel and partner management Brad Langley told BTN. "We felt the marketplace didn't offer a cohesive, seamless solution, an end-to-end process while also incorporating the nontraditional events with a direct booking engine. We've looked for the right partner … and have been in discussions with VenueBook for some time."
VenueBook, which recently released a booking API, provides real-time access to available space via a direct connection into the participating venues' sales and catering systems, VenueBook CEO Kelsey Recht told BTN, as well as pricing and a proprietary booking engine. She added that the system supports three types of booking: instant booking, a request for direct booking and the traditional request-for-proposals process. These combine automation and customization.
Recht said that data in the marketplace shows event planners prefer a request-to-book experience as opposed to instant-book. Users can preformat their meeting and event packages and complete 80 percent of the process in less than 15 minutes, she said, adding "all the other side has to do is approve it or turn it down."
Planners then can customize the rest of their event while working with the venue manager, sign a contract and pay the deposit directly within the system. This differs from other alternative event direct booking options in that "others are either a very rigid packaging-based solution or tend to be more listing experiences that truly are not dynamic overall," Recht said.
Langley added that the partnership will bring "spend data into Aventri for our planners to have a full view and transparency to overall event spend in one location. Before, you could capture just venue spend for the hotel, not necessarily for off-site activities."
VenueBook venues are located in Chicago, Denver, New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. The company plans to increase the number of venues and locations in major cities in the U.S., but would not elaborate further.