Award winning event tech start-up iVvy is revolutionising the events industry by centralising function spaces and group accommodations for the first time ever in Australia.
With close to 1,000 venues already registered, event organisers can search, compare and book through the only central registry in the country. Over 150 of these venues offer instantaneous and live‐booking options.
Marketplace is intended to become the one‐stop platform for all event needs from meetings to weddings. It allows planners to find a venue and book it in just 6 minutes ‐ down from an average of 6 weeks it normally takes.
How does iVvy’s Marketplace plaform work?
For hotels and venues, Marketplace provides the opportunity to get more bookings by publishing prices and availability to multiple online channels. Real‐time availability allows easier and quicker access to information from anywhere in the world.
“Almost every other facet of travel and hospitality has real‐time booking capabilities, so it is high time event planners get the same efficiencies. Over the last few years, we have worked with hundreds of event organisers and hotels to fine‐tune the platform and get it right.
“It will be a staged approach to get everyone into live trading. We are really confident that this will set the pace for the future of this Industry. I’m really proud of the iVvy team for realising the vision of the first real‐time trading platform in MICE and hospitality industries,” said Lauren Hall, CEO of iVvy.
What is the story behind iVvy?
Lauren told Anthill that she was inspired you start iVvy back when she was living in South Africa.
“I was planning an event and went through all the leg work of finding a venue and then sourcing suppliers based on the venue. After about six weeks of planning, I then went to finalise the suppliers and more than 50 per cent of them including the venue wasn’t available.
“This was my “Aha!” moment. I thought that there surely must be an easier way to check for venues and suppliers, book and compare. Turns out there wasn’t a single unified solution.
“So I started building one for the market so others would not have to go through similar frustrations.
Lauren met her co-founder James Greig and propositioned him to develop their application for his equity stake in the business.
They then went on to raise their first seed funding of $250,000 to get everything started. They have now raised over $4.2 million from private high net worth investors and executed on all of our major milestones and are now looking at doing a Series A funding that will help take the product global.
iVvy is already working with hundreds of hotels in Australia, New Zealand and Europe, including brands such as Vibe Hotels, Mantra, Adina, Peppers, Breakfree, Travelodge and Wyndham to centralise their event functions. The Marketplace is an extension of these platforms that are available to the public for live search of function space and group accommodations.
