Bizly Launches Platform for Booking, Managing Small Meeting Events

Bizly, a platform for booking and managing small meetings, announced the launch of its services to all prospective corporate customers, opening up the site following its closed access period. Bizly caters to the small meetings market – which totals two-thirds of all corporate meeting & event spend – through an innovative platform that allows users to easily and efficiently select venues and book events while abiding by their company’s pre-set spending limits, compliance rules and negotiated rates. Through its concierge support, Bizly leverages the personal attention and negotiation power of a traditional meeting agency, without the excessive price tag and lag time around small meetings.

Bizly has been operating in a closed beta phase with several Fortune 100 customers including a large pharmaceutical company, a top 10 U.S. manufacturer, a consumer products leader and one of the world’s largest software companies among its early adopters. During this closed beta period, Bizly has seen explosive adoption rates, breaking through to administrators and other employees that other platforms have failed to engage in the past. Bizly overcomes the timeless pain point of booking meetings – the RFP – and replaces it with a straightforward, consumer-style online booking experience that adheres to corporate spending requirements. Bizly offers access to curated, detailed content for over 2,000 meetings venues including restaurants, hotels and other traditional and unique meeting locations across the top 50 U.S. metropolitan areas.

Small meetings also represent a major untapped revenue opportunity for the hospitality industry. The current utilization rate for smaller corporate meeting spaces at hotels and restaurants is approximately 20% - far below the current demand, which is growing explosively. At the same time, trends like home sharing are increasingly cutting into hotel revenue. Bizly opens the door for hospitality venues to grow their corporate group and small meetings business by connecting them directly with anyone booking a small meeting – which typically and increasingly happens outside of the meetings department and is handled by employees from executive assistants to sales and human resources professionals.

The hospitality industry is at a critical point as it wrestles with the impact of Airbnb and the rise in home sharing for business travel. Bizly feel's the industry’s next big growth opportunity is corporate groups and small meetings. Bizly delivers small meetings revenue by seamlessly connecting hotels and restaurants with the employees across an organization that drive small meeting demand – a flow of business that these venues can’t easily generate on their own.