Groupbook is an automated group accommodation software platform that focuses on the needs of event organizers and creates a single point of contact while giving discounts to guests.
Fort Lauderdale, Florida, June 06, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Group travel is a major component of the global hospitality industry, making up a large part of hotels’ income, particularly during non-holiday seasons. Youth and amateur sports are a huge contributor to group travel revenue, with $10.9 billion spent on lodging in 2023, according to a report by Sports ETA. With the global events industry expected to grow to $2.1 trillion by 2032, group travel is only going to become even more valuable.
However, the group travel industry is also incredibly fragmented, with a lack of resources that can help event organizers efficiently reserve hotel blocks for guests. Reserving more than 10 rooms at a time can be complicated, especially coordinating across three parties – the hotel, the event organizers, and the guests. This is one of the major obstacles to a smooth experience.
The solution to this problem is Groupbook, an innovative, business-to-business group accommodation software platform that focuses on the needs of event organizers, automating the process and creating a single point of contact. This creates value for hotels, organizers, and events alike.
Groupbook was founded by Doug Freeman, after having encountered problems in group travel, both professionally and personally. After his career as a minor league baseball player, Freeman coached collegiate baseball and owned a scouting service. During his involvement with youth baseball, he organized various events and tournaments, experiencing firsthand the various complications involved in arranging accommodation for large groups of people. Later, Freeman opened a travel agency and he used several travel booking software programs on the market, but all of them involved having to deal directly with the hotels.
Freeman began thinking about building his own booking engine that solved these issues, laying the foundation for Groupbook. When he got married at a destination wedding in Malta, he realized that the wedding planning industry suffered the same problems as youth sports, to an even worse degree. Wedding planners have to call hotel after hotel to see if there are rooms available, jumping through many hoops in the process.
This solidified his decision to create Groupbook, which acts as a concierge partner for large group travel and events, automating the entire process, from event creation, hotel contracting, and all the way to check-out. According to Freeman, other platforms hand off organizers and guests to the hotels, and they still have to coordinate with them until arrival and check-in time. Groupbook is the single point of contact, minimizing confusion for guests and allowing them to benefit from discounts, as well as driving revenue for hotels and organizers.
After creating an account with Groupbook, organizers can input their event’s details, such as location and number of guests, and Groupbook will come back with a price quote within one to five days. Due to Groupbook’s wide network of over 30,000 hotels across the US and overseas, it can come up with a rate in a couple of hours at the quickest. Once the organizer has confirmed the hotel, Groupbook then creates a custom booking link that will allow guests to reserve their rooms.
Groupbook also offers a proprietary patent-pending rate plan that allows event organizers to view a live, real-time discounted rate and allows hotels to promote a discounted rate for ten or more rooms, based on availability. It can be integrated into other platforms via API and can also be white-labeled for corporate clients.
“Having a single point of contact and clear communication with hotels is a great benefit for organizers,” Freeman says. “On the other hand, there has yet to be a digital tool for the conversion side, because hotels can’t build out custom conversion tools for each block. That’s why we’re here, and more than 30,000 hotels have joined our system because we’re essentially an extension of their sales team.”
Over the past 18 months, Groupbook has facilitated more than 2,500 events, and it has partnered with a large event planning website as a booking partner. It has recently seen an uptick in bookings, which is why it is looking for investors and tech partners that will help it scale its operations and accommodate the increased demand.
“Groupbook is a project that I’ve personally bootstrapped, and we’ve seen early success,” Freeman says. “Now, we’re at a point where we need investment and partnerships to be able to handle the influx of demand, which is a great problem to have. We are seeking investors who have experience in the travel and events organizing space, as well as technology partners that will help us further expand our capabilities.”
Media contact:
Name: Groupbook
Email: support@reservemygroup.com
