What Eventbrite Tells Us About the Big Business of Events

Eventbrite released its first quarterly earnings report this week, showing the success of its effort to gobble up ticketing platforms around the world and integrate them into its platform.

The lesson is that smaller venues and organizations need effective event planning tools that can scale with their needs. Eventbrite has found success with its more premium service options over the last year, meaning customers are choosing to pay more to access more robust tools.

Check out my story below. We’ve also got the latest on how luxury travel agents are delving into intense work to make experiences resonate with their clients, and Choice Hotels’ rough quarter.

If you have any feedback about the newsletter or news tips, feel free to reach out to me via email at [email protected] or tweet me @sheivach.

— Andrew Sheivachman, Senior Editor

The Future of Events and Meetings

Eventbrite Sees Revenue Soar in Earnings Debut: Eventbrite is still losing money as it grows, but now has strong revenue growth and plenty of cash to spend while getting back on track. The state of the booming global events business is a big help.

Luxury Agents Try to Combine High-Level Service With Street-Level Experiences: Luxury travel advisors are experts at planning a five-star vacation for their clients, but agents are more frequently being asked to add a more local element to their plans. A lot of behind-the-scenes work goes into making sure these experiences go off without a hitch.

Choice Hotels Sees Room Revenue Hurt by Hurricane Florence: The bigger question the hotel industry is no doubt asking itself is this: Was this third quarter just a one-off? Or was it a sign of tougher times to come?

Around the Industry

WebBeds on Shopping Spree for Bedbanks: Should Hotelbeds Be Worried? The acquisition of Destinations of the World seals WebBeds as the second largest B2B bedbank player, but incumbent Hotelbeds need not worry — for a very long time.

The Big-Money Reinvention of the Humble Hostel: Money is flowing into the hostels market and established hotel companies want a piece. Will this new corporatization cost hostels the soul of their original mission?

TripAdvisor Launches Redesign to Hook the Non-Bookers: If travelers aren’t ready to book, feed them some inspiration and hope they’ll hang around until they are. That is essentially what TripAdvisor’s new travel feed is all about. Will the grand experiment work? We’ll have to wait and see how the feature evolves.

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Skift Senior Editor Andrew Sheivachman [[email protected]] curates the Skift Meetings Innovation Report. Skift emails the newsletter every Wednesday.

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