JUNE 21ST EVENTS REBOOT: Venuedirectory.com expands executive team

Venuedirectory.com says a series of significant international business wins has led it to increase its global business focus and to expand its team.

The largest booking and data distribution service of venue information in the UK MICE industry has confirmed deals to supply its data to major companies based in the USA, Australia and Canada.

This data provides solutions for event planning agencies, corporate meeting planners and individuals to search for venues, enquire, book, track, invoice, report and make commission claims.

To support this international integration and to consolidate this global growth, venuedirectory.com is strengthening its team with the recruitment of a Sales & Distribution Director and a Marketing Manager. Its IT development team has also doubled in size.

Michael Begley, whose role has changed from Managing Director to CEO of venuedirectory.com, said: “To have significantly expanded our international client base is exciting, especially in the current business environment. It’s a reflection of the considerable investment we have made into our in-house venue sourcing and management software over the last few years and also a sure sign that demand for venue data is increasing as the global events sector gradually recovers.

“We’re a unique business as our clients have two different business profiles; there are the users of the data – the agents – and those who supply the data – the venues. Currently between 9 and 12% of venues on our database are outside of the UK and we’d like to increase that proportion in the future.

“To support our global growth, we need to expand our core UK team and are actively recruiting, as a strong indication of our commitment to growth and to customer service.”

venuedirectory.com was launched in 1993 and now has a database of over 400,000 meeting and event spaces in 300 countries. In 2008 Venuedirectory.com launched the UK’s first end to end solution for meetings management – GRATIS – which is today used by over 50 specialist businesses and organisations throughout the UK.

In addition, the company also developed an open API allowing organisations to implement bespoke online client solutions.