change take
The combined platform is expected to be a new all-in-one offering that combines meeting and travel management with venue and supplier sourcing.
Miguel Neves
Meetings and travel management platform Groupize announced Wednesday it has acquired venue and supplier marketplace The Vendry. The acquisition adds more than 73,000 venues and suppliers to Groupize’s existing global 190,000 hotel booking engine, which is targeted at corporate planners.
The Vendry says 150,000 event planners use it every month. It also runs a popular professional community on Slack for corporate event professionals.
The Vendry will be integrated into Groupize at the end of this year, and going forward, the venue and supplier marketplace will be renamed The Vendry by Groupize.
“All of our enterprise customers, especially those in industries such as life sciences, have a very high number of gatherings in non-hotel venues, so will benefit greatly from staying on the Groupize platform to manage all their venue needs,” said Alisa De, CEO of Groupize. .
Vendry founder Daphne Hoppenot will join the Groupize executive team as a strategic advisor. She said that in the short term, venues and merchants on the acquired platforms will benefit the most. “Our vendors will likely see the most immediate impact, benefiting from Groupize’s hundreds of enterprise customers, including five of the Fortune 25, who regularly use Groupize to find venues for their group meetings and events. For our For suppliers, this means quickly acquiring a new set of high-quality leads and bookings,” said Hoppenot.
The Vendry wins the 2023 Skift Meetings Award for Best Site Procurement Solution.
Hopnot said the acquisition started as a strategic partnership conversation and evolved into something more. “After months of working hard to find ways we could work together, it became clear that combining our products was the best way to build something truly incredible for our shared user base.”
Hoppenot shared with Skift Meetings her reasons for selling the company she founded and raised $8 million in financing.
“It was clear to The Vendry that in order to be successful in our venue search, we needed a deeper understanding of large meeting and group travel spaces. We believe The Vendry is the first to successfully source private dining rooms, rooftops and other unique venues and vendors planners serve the market. But we also cannot ignore the fact that most corporate spending in dollar terms occurs with large hotel groups and airlines,” she said.
