Cvent Unveils Major Updates to the CSN and Announces New Group Business Intelligence™ Solution
Cvent's latest product developments announced at annual CONNECT conference in Las Vegas
Tysons Corner, VA and Las Vegas – June 13, 2017 –Cvent, Inc., the market leader in meetings, events and travel technology, unveiled the complete redesign of the Cvent Supplier Network™ (CSN) venue sourcing platform. The redesign delivers significant improvements to usability, search relevancy and design to help meeting planners find the perfect venue with ease.
Kevin Fliess Vice President of Marketing at Cvent said: "This launch marks a paradigm shift in venue sourcing based on our customers' holistic interests and feedback. Our technology team has spent thousands of hours doing field research and has worked hand in hand with our customers to ensure that the redesign meets the needs of the modern planner and our supplier partners."
Some of the CSN redesign highlights include:
- A much more intuitive platform, featuring a single search field where users simply enter the name of any city, airport, address or even neighborhood. The shift to Google Maps allows planners to easily utilize a map or list view to find their desired venue in the perfect location.
- For event planners looking for a bargain, the platform now automatically displays venues that have 'need dates' or are running promotions over specified dates.
- Users who are logged into their CSN account can access a brand new feature, the Venue List, which unifies searches across devices. The enhanced mobile support allows planners to start the venue search process on a phone, continue on their desk at work, and make adjustments in the evening via a tablet – a major advantage for planners who often start and finish the venue selection process on different devices.
- Several enhancements, such as map-driven searches and city aliases, help international planners find venues in unfamiliar locations with ease.
- While many of the updates affect the front-end user experience, the additional needs of hotels and event venues were also considered in the redesign. CSN studies show that planners focus primarily on images, meetings space information, floor plans and menus.
- The platform now boasts an expanded photo capacity, allowing venues to display high-definition imagery. This update will likely offer venues that feature rich media a significant advantage in customer searches and click-through rates.
- Further enhancements include support for mobile advertising and streamlined venue profiles designed to increase user engagement and exposure.
In addition to unveiling the redesign of the CSN, Cvent announced their new Group Business Intelligence solution. Part of the Cvent Hospitality Cloud, the new solution will enable hospitality professionals to see real-time data and analytics of their group business, and that of their competitors, in a single easy-to-use platform.
"Hospitality professionals need timely and actionable intelligence for their group business segment in order to maintain and improve their competitive position," said Pete Floros, SVP of Product Management at Cvent. "Providing our clients with the tools to confidently respond to pending RFPs and book business based on competitor rate and response information offers an invaluable opportunity to drive revenue. Our whole goal in designing the platform was to make the data actionable - enabling our supplier partners to generate more qualified group business leads and increase revenue per available room."
The Group Business Intelligence solution is available to Cvent hospitality customers through an online portal, which is constantly updated with the latest information. Hoteliers can segment information based on their reporting needs–including specific time periods, customer segments, and locations to see how particular parts of the business are performing. Having this data in an accessible, intuitive, comprehensive dashboard lets hospitality professionals drill down from overall results to individual RFPs within Cvent’s platform, and align their response with business goals. Hoteliers can now see how their venue is performing relative to their competitive set, with regards to demand generation, response and award behaviour.
"Our new Group Business Intelligence platform is designed to make the hotelier's job easier," added Floros. "By providing real time, 24/7 access to your group competitive intelligence, along with the ability to quickly filter, segment and navigate to underlying RFPs for immediate action, this solution is a game-changer."
Notes to Editor
About the Cvent Supplier Network
Featuring more than 245,000 hotels, resorts and special event venues, the Cvent Supplier Network is one of the world's largest and most accurate databases of detailed venue information. Cvent sourced more than $11 billion in meetings and events through its marketplace in 2016. The CSN contains listings of hotels and other venues in more than 175 countries that can be searched and filtered based on approximately 200 meetings and events attributes. The Network is part of the Cvent Hospitality Cloud, which provides hotels, CVBs and other event venue owners, solutions to effectively generate qualified demand for meetings and events, manage that demand more efficiently, and measure group business performance.
About Cvent
Cvent is a leading meetings, events, and hospitality technology provider with 4,800+ employees and ~22,000 customers worldwide as of December 31, 2023. Founded in 1999, the company delivers a comprehensive event marketing and management platform and offers a global marketplace where event professionals collaborate with venues to create engaging, impactful experiences. Cvent is headquartered in Tysons, Virginia, just outside of Washington D.C., and has additional offices around the world to support its growing global customer base. The comprehensive Cvent event marketing and management platform offers software solutions to event organizers and marketers for online event registration, venue selection, event marketing and management, virtual and onsite solutions, and attendee engagement. Cvent’s suite of products automate and simplify the event management lifecycle and maximize the impact of in-person, virtual, and hybrid events. Hotels and venues use Cvent’s supplier and venue solutions to win more group and corporate travel business through Cvent’s sourcing platforms. Cvent solutions optimize the event management value chain and have enabled clients around the world to manage millions of meetings and events. For more information, please visit Cvent.com.