Meetingselect is an exceptional platform for the MICE industry to manage meetings and events. Meetingselect, the meetings management platform, has received accolades from organizations, venues, and partners. With streamlined solutions, this marketplace for meetings, group bookings and workspaces empower bookers and venues, providing access to data, savings, and insights.
In an exclusive interview with MICE Travel Advisor, Rachel Havas, Cluster Director for Americas at Meetingselect shares her view how the meetings and events’ industry is moving and excelling towards sustainable approach.
MICE Travel Advisor: Tell us about Meetingselect, how is this all-in-one meeting management platform working to enhance the mice market?
Rachel Havas: Meetingselect was founded back in 2007 when we noticed a lack of transparency and efficiency in the process of booking meetings and events. These gatherings are the place where organizations come together to make impactful decisions and connect in ways that empower growth, for them as well as others. We became a digital all-in-one meeting management platform to support the improvement in the planning, booking, and execution of these events. We’re also a venue marketplace, meaning we host profiles for over 500,000 event space providers around the world that bookers can explore, effectively compare, and finally choose the venue that suits their tailored meeting needs best. They can instantly request proposals from multiple locations and, in some cases, we see a request confirmed with a negotiated special offer only 7 minutes after the booker entered the request in Meetingselect’s platform. Alongside this, we allow 24/7 data access for these organizations to gain insight into their spending, saving, and sustainable decisions to allow for well-informed strategies in the future.
MICE Travel Advisor: Since Covid-19, how is the MICE industry booming?
Rachel Havas: Many have longed for the resurgence of live contact after almost 2 years of online events, making the MICE industry come back strongly. Organizations prefer engaging with clients face to face and exchanging knowledge between teams within an inspirational space. In NORAM and LATAM regions, we see the number of meetings organized rise tremendously, with a larger attendance than before the pandemic, and hotels with full calendars. There are great events in the pipeline, both locally and internationally and of all sizes, supporting the recovery of the MICE industry’s economics throughout the world.
MICE Travel Advisor: What are Meetingselect’s future plans to upgrade as one of the major engines in this market?
Rachel Havas: Meetingselect continuously invests in technology to improve our customers’ experience. We have a full in-house IT development department, which allows us to update and customize our platform quickly and efficiently. By investing in long-lasting partnerships with key players in the market, we ensure a comprehensive journey throughout our platform. For instance, we acquired Cyberdigma in 2022, a hospitality tech company, with whom we launched a successful Instant Booking tool to support the real time communication and planning requirements today’s industry holds. It includes a location management system, a booking platform, and a system with which you can manage the different sales channels, aside from being cloud based. With over 500.000 locations spread across all continents and thousands of proposals requested every week, our platform empowers organizations, meeting planners, hotel chains, small unique venues, travel agencies and others to connect and collaborate effectively.
MICE Travel Advisor: What are your current major markets and how are you planning your next target?
Rachel Havas: It had always been a dream of our founders to globalize our vision of connecting powerful organizations more efficiently through our meeting management platform. Today, Meetingselect’s services are used worldwide. Combining innovative digital technology with tailored international hospitality, we became the market leader in the country. In the last 5 years, Meetingselect grew to EMEA, APAC, LATAM, and NORAM with support teams located in these regions, counting over 18 nationalities. Our own expansion enables a seamless experience for our bookers, venues, and partners to manage their meetings and grow their businesses.
MICE Travel Advisor: Tell us about your future plans and your expansion projects.
Rachel Havas: Inclusivity and diversity are an essential part of our business strategy, both inhouse and within our customer base and partnerships. Our ambitious team of young talents is growing rapidly, now also located in Latin America, North America and Asia/Pacific regions. They maintain a high level of personal service and with our specialized cluster directors of LATAM, NORAM AND APAC, our connections with local partners there are growing even faster. It has allowed us to establish an international culture in providing global services with local knowledge, ensuring the innovative platform and benefits are adapted to the varying needs in the different countries. Only in this way do we remain valuable to and establish accelerating growth for all our partners.
MICE Travel Advisor: Tell us about the partnership program and how this offers enhanced services to the providers.
Rachel Havas: Meetingselect only builds partnerships with establishments that sufficiently enhance the services we provide to our customers or make an impact in empowering connections. Our partnerships concerning the ongoing development of the platform enable an even broader range of services, all in one place, allowing for more efficiency and transparency in the industry. The API and White Label solutions of the Instant Booking tool create easy and fast access to a broad database of businesses and an improved collaboration with the end customer. Alongside this, the data we offer our partners access to support their planning, savings, and efficiency for better decision-making in the future. All these efforts save measurable time, costs, and stress for our partners and customers on a consistent basis at every level when managing their meetings.
MICE Travel Advisor: Give us your opinion on the economic and sustainable aspects in the MICE industry
Rachel Havas: The recent market analysis done by the Grand Review Research says “the global MICE market was valued at USD 876.42 billion in 2022 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.5% from 2023 to 2030”. The investment and improvement in technology, specifically for the MICE sector regarding travel, allows for broader and more efficient connectivity and higher conversion rate worldwide. Taking this growth into consideration, also in more remote areas, it is crucial that the industry recognizes the importance of creating sustainable meeting opportunities. At Meetingselect, sustainability plays a substantial role in our business strategy, which is one of the reasons I am so proud to be part of this company. We actively encourage our customers and partners to incorporate sustainability by providing them with adequate tools to gain insight into the impact their decisions have on our environment. We’ve implemented calculators to determine and guide them on how to reduce or compensate for their CO2 emissions when planning their meetings. We’ve developed and participated in initiatives that have a direct impact on creating a greener world, for example founding Meetings for Trees last year. Plus, since 2015, Meetingselect has received a silver rating from Ecovadis for our initiatives towards corporate social responsibility. We are very excited to increase our efforts and inspire the actions of our customers and partners in creating a better, healthier world. Collectively sharing our knowledge and stimulating impactful connections is the way we all contribute towards empowering that growth.
