Groupbook simplifies organizing group travel and events with innovative software platform
Fort Lauderdale, Fla., June 6, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Group travel is an important component of the global hotel industry, making up a large portion of hotel revenue, especially outside of holiday periods. Youth and amateur sports contribute hugely to group travel revenue, with $10.9 billion spent on accommodation in 2023, according to a report from Sports ETA. With the global events industry expected to grow to $2.1 trillion by 2032, group travel will only become even more valuable.
However, the group travel industry is also incredibly fragmented, lacking resources that can help event organizers book hotel blocks for guests efficiently. Booking more than 10 rooms at the same time can be complicated, especially coordination between three parties – the hotel, event organizers and guests. This is one of the main obstacles to a smooth experience.
The solution to this problem is Groupbook, an innovative business-to-business group hosting 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.
Groupbook was founded by Doug Freeman after he encountered problems with group travel, both professionally and personally. After his career as a minor league baseball player, Freeman coached college baseball and owned a scouting service. During his involvement in youth baseball, he organized numerous events and tournaments, experiencing firsthand the many complications involved in arranging accommodations for large groups of people. Later, Freeman opened a travel agency and used several travel booking software on the market, but they all involved the need to deal directly with hotels.
Freeman began thinking about building his own booking engine that would solve these problems, laying the foundation for Groupbook. When he got married at a destination wedding in Malta, he realized that the wedding planning industry suffered from the same problems as youth sports, to an even worse degree. Wedding planners have to call hotel after hotel to see if rooms are available, jumping through many hoops in the process.
This solidified their decision to create Groupbook, which acts as a concierge partner for large group travel and events, automating the entire process from event creation, hotel booking and all the way to check-out. According to Freeman, other platforms transfer organizers and guests to hotels, and they still need 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 generating revenue for hotels and organizers.
After creating a Groupbook account, organizers can enter event details such as location and number of guests, and Groupbook will return with a price quote within one to five days. Due to Groupbook’s extensive network of over 30,000 hotels in the US and abroad, it can come up with a rate in a few hours at most. Once the organizer confirms the hotel, Groupbook will create a custom booking link that allows guests to reserve their room.
Groupbook also offers a patent-pending proprietary rate plan that allows event organizers to view a discounted rate live and in real time and allows hotels to promote a discounted rate for ten or more rooms based on availability. It can be integrated with other platforms via API and can also be white-labeled for enterprise customers.
“Having a single point of contact and clear communication with hotels is a huge benefit for organizers,” says Freeman. “On the other hand, there is still no digital tool for the conversion side, because hotels cannot build custom conversion tools for each block. That’s why we’re here, and over 30,000 hotels have joined our system because we’re essentially an extension of your sales team.”
Over the past 18 months, Groupbook has facilitated over 2,500 events and partnered with a major event planning website as a booking partner. It has recently seen an increase in bookings, which is why it is looking for investors and technology partners to help it scale its operations and accommodate the increase in demand.
“Groupbook is a project I started personally and we had initial success,” says Freeman. “Now, we are at a point where we need investments and partnerships to be able to deal with the flow of demand, which is a big problem to have. We are looking for investors who have experience in organizing travel and events, as well as technology partners who will help us further expand our capabilities.”
Media Contact:
Name: Group Book
Email: support@reservemygroup.com
