Skift Take

Parts of the travel industry will always need that bit of automation. Now technology companies have the disjointed hybrid meeting booking process in their sights.

Series: Future of Work

Future of Work

As organizations start to embrace distributed work and virtual meetings, the corporate travel and meetings sectors are preparing for change. Read Skift’s ongoing coverage of this shift in business travel behavior through the lens of both brands and consumers.

Learn More

The virtual side to company meetings looks like it’s here to stay, even with a return to face-to-face. After switching their business models to factor in remote work locations, traditional meeting platforms are jumping into the hybrid space, offering organziers and venues more seamless ways to invite other participants virtually. Platforms like Groupize, Meetingsbooker and Meetingselect have made it their business to carry out that painful integration directly into hotels and other spaces, to offer instant availability. A common bugbear with many hotels is they rarely offer a way to book meeting spaces directly on their own website. "Ninety five percent of hotel websites do not offer group bookings with live availability," said Judith Huisman, Meetingselect's founder. "More than 80 percent of booking requests do not convert. Look at the manual labor costs they have." Combined, these three meetings platforms plug into hundreds and thousands of properties. Now they're developing new ways that allow simultaneous virtual meetings, on top of the physical meeting. Groupize is launching an attendee app for virtual, hybrid and in-person events. It's designed for internal meetings as well as conferences, and helps companies “level up their experiences for events such as e-learning, training, e-recruiting, team building, trade shows and more,” the company said. “In line with our vision and passion, we created this app for company-wide adoption to address an untapped and underserved market," said CEO Alisa de Gaspe Beaubien. The app will work with video conferencing services like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, GoToMeeting, Goog