Meetingmax inks deals with four more tourism bureaus

Vancouver company’s online platform now used by 12 convention and visitors bureaus in the United States

Curt Cherewayko

A Vancouver-based company’s online hotel booking system for large-scale event planners is continuing its U.S. expansion, signing deals with four convention and visitors bureaus (CVBs) in Tempe, Arizona; Bakersfield, California; and Tri-Cities and Yakima, Washington.

That brings Meetingmax Planning Inc.’s client roster of U.S.-based CVBs, which market their respective cities as destinations for conventions and other large-scale events, to 12.

CVBs such as the Spokane Regional Convention and Visitors Bureau (SRCVB) use Meetingmax’s booking platform to assign hotels, set room rates and manage room inventory.

Ann Gillespie, a convention sales assistant with the SRCVB, said that the bureau has used Meetingmax’s platform to organize room bookings for up to 25 hotels during a single event. She added that the average convention or conference in Spokane typically requires co-ordination between four or five hotels.

Meetingmax’s platform is essentially another marketing tool to attract event tourism to Spokane, said Gillespie.

“Basically it’s a service for our customers – both the meeting’s planner and the delegates that are attending,” she said.

CVBs, hotels and meeting planners can all use Meetingmax’s system simultaneously to manage and update the planning of an event.

Meetingmax started as the event planning and managing arm of Uniglobe Network Travel. When it began experiencing solid growth, it was spun out as its own entity.

The seven-year-old company initially developed its online platform as a tool to use internally but, after CVBs began inquiring about licensing the technology, Meetingmax developed it into a robust, sellable offering.

“When we needed an online housing solution we went and shopped the open market and looked at all the various solutions before they were our competitors,” said Jeff Duncan, Meetingmax’s COO.

“None of them really addressed 100% of what we needed them to do. So we built one on our own.”

The company generated roughly $1.8 million in revenue last year, between its event planning business and its online system. And while it still does event planning, Duncan believes the company’s future growth will stem largely from its online offering.

In 2008, the platform processed $3.15 million worth of hotel bookings, versus $1.17 million in 2007.

Duncan projected that the system will book more than $6.5 million worth of hotel-room nights in 2009.

The company generates revenue from annual licence fees and commissions from each room night that is booked through the system.

Adoption of the platform has been largely through word of mouth. For example, the CVB in Spokane helped sign the CVB in Madison, Wisconsin, onto the system. The CVB in Tempe was introduced to Meetingmax by organizers of the Ironman competitions in Madison.

Duncan said that what differentiates Meetingmax’s platform from other online hotel-booking systems is that it was built by event planners, not software developers.

“We’re not a software company jumping in the business of online housing solutions,” he said. •

cgc@biv.com