Meetingselect makes venue sourcing and meetings management easy

Meetingselect is the fastest growing international booking tool for online search and booking of hotels, meeting rooms and event venues. "We also specialize in strategic meeting management", says co-founder Anouk Roohé. "Innovation to efficiently book online meetings and groups is central to this." Some figures: the Meetingselect database consists of more than 100,000 hotels and more than 500,000 inspiring meeting rooms worldwide. The company has three branches, in New York, Amsterdam and Brussels. The meeting tool is available in 7 languages. Whether you’re looking for hotel chains, conference centres or unique venues such as castles, museums, meeting farms, country houses, golf clubs, design studios or ships, via Meetingselect you will find what you’re looking for.

Hospitality mindset

"And if you don't find what you're looking for, or if you want advice, for example on which venue is the most suitable, our staff will be there to help you out", says co-founder Anouk Roohé. "The strength of our company is that we combine technology with a hospitality mindset. Our team consists of fifty driven professionals, including experienced meeting experts. They are happy to help our customers book hotels and meeting venues anywhere in the world. This can be done face-to-face, over the phone, via email or chat: whatever suits the customer. This is how we assist bookers in finding the most suitable venues that fit within their budget and/or specific wishes.”

Colleagues

Meetingselect was founded in 2007 by Anouk Roohé and Judith Huisman. "As colleagues in the sales department of a large international hotel chain, we noticed a number of things," says Roohé. "One: if you want to reserve a room for a meeting or conference, requesting quotations, sending separate emails of the wishes and comparing the quotations takes up an enormous amount of time.” "Two: bookers would like to maintain personal contact with the venue up to and including the use of it.” "Three: companies want to gain more insight into their meetings & hotel policy. One of the reasons for this is to gain insight into data or to get a grip on costs, but also to immediately know where the guests are in the event of a calamity, for example.” "With Meetingselect, we wanted to combine all these aspects into one online tool, which we did. Since its foundation, our company has doubled in size every year. We also received many great international awards in the field of Meeting Tech and digital entrepreneurship."

Super easy

How does Meetingselect work exactly? Roohé: "The online booking tool has been perfected down to the last detail - we will of course continue to develop it together with our users - and is really super easy to work with.” "In addition, our hotel & meeting experts are ready to relieve and inspire customers. They think along with you about everything involved in the organization of a meeting or conference. We are not merely an online platform, but for companies in particular the preferred Meeting & Hotel Agency." "We are also very active in developing our software. For example, we offer private labels and web services to traffic agencies, hotel chains and travel agents, allowing them to book hotels and/or meetings for groups directly online.” "We also offer white label / xml solutions for convention agencies and business travel agencies. When meeting planners search for a hotel or meeting venue or make a group reservation through the bureau or agency, they get direct access to the complete database of Meetingselect. A nice side effect for any preferred partners is that they are the first to appear." [caption id="attachment_79032" align="alignnone" width="750"] One of the parties that has entered into a strategic collaboration with Meetingselect is the Netherlands Board of Tourism and Conventions (NBTC).[/caption]

Holland.com

One of the parties that has entered into a strategic collaboration with Meetingselect is the Netherlands Board of Tourism and Conventions (NBTC). "It works for us in two ways", explains Eric Bakermans, Director of Marketing Meetings, Conventions & Events at NBTC. "On the one hand, we are opening up the Dutch meeting market to meeting planners and they can make use of the database via our website www.holland.com. On the other hand, we offer our preferred partners the service of being the first to show up in a search. Especially for hotels, conference centres, DMCs and urban congress bureaus that operate internationally, this extra attention has added tremendous value."

One invoice

Roohé: "Another development that we are working on is the solution of turning all individual invoices into one invoice. Think, for example, of large corporations that hold countless meetings and conferences worldwide, financial institutions, pharmaceutical companies, you name it. Wouldn’t it be nice if, instead of receiving an invoice separately for each venue or hotel chain, they were to receive a total invoice from one supplier?" Customers don’t have to worry about the implementation either. Recently, Meetingselect even scored a 9 for the implementation of its booking tool at a customer with 96 different locations. Roohé: "The job had to be completed within two months and we achieved that with flying colours."

International growth

The success of Meetingselect, as already mentioned, lies mainly in listening to the needs of customers. "From the outset, Meetingselect has done everything in its power to make booking venues and organizing events as easy, inspiring and budget-friendly as possible for our customers. Our goal is to be and remain the best meeting booking tool. Not only in Europe, but also in the rest of the world. Growing internationally is currently a hot topic for us." The management team of the company will soon be expanded with a General Manager and a Chief Technology Officer. This gives Roohé and Huisman the freedom to focus on new international and strategic developments. "Our starting point is always: what more value can Meetingselect add to its customers? Not only should it be easy, it should also be fun to work with us. We invite every meeting planner to give it a try," says Anouk Roohé.