Founded in March 2009 by two experienced European event planners who were having problems finding service providers and venues for their events abroad, the international event and meeting portal Event1001.com has just celebrated its first anniversary with over 15,000 members.
“The MICE industry is very enthusiastic about this new initiative because of the transparency and international approach,” says John Kirk, Sales Director of Event1001.com. “New requests for company profiles come in every day which contributes to continuous growth. Even convention bureaux are using Event1001.com as a marketing tool for promoting their members.”
During the first year of business, the focus has been on increasing the number of the company profiles on the portal. With now over 15,000 members, the goal of 10,000 set for the first 12 months has been way surpassed. Likewise, the portal has members from 125 different countries, 50 more than the original goal.
The main objective for 2010 is to increase the membership of companies based in the world’s top 20 congress destinations. To this end, SEO is also a chief concern: the portal achieved a PageRank 3 after one year online, and the aim for 2010 is to up this indicator to 4. In addition, Event1001.com will continue to implement its no-banner advertising policy for the sake of transparency.
When asked about the distribution by supplier and venue categories and by countries, Kirk stated that the number of hotels and venues registered has surpassed expectations. “Nonetheless, several categories, including technical services, are below par; although this could be explained by the fact there are far more hotels and venues than service providers.”
“As to the geographical distribution of members, the reaction from Italy and Spain, in addition to UAE and Mexico, has been very favourable. However, on the negative side, USA has not as yet lived up to our expectations. Countries behindhand in the implementation of Internet marketing and less popular destinations are also lagging behind objectives. Nonetheless, given the current economic environment, we are very pleased with the results so far.”
An international meetings and event portal, such as Event1001.com, has to deal with many different social and business cultures. Although a challenge, each country requiring a specific approach and a far bit of groundwork, the portal has got round this problem by appointing local representatives, above all in the case of countries where Internet marketing is still in its infancy.
Aware that the global economy is still in a fragile state, Event1001.com is currently offering new members registering before the second week of March a free one-year trial period. “To complement this,” says Mariette Timmermans, the portal’s marketing director, “we will be offering a 50% discount on annual fees starting from the second fortnight of March. Notwithstanding the crisis, we believe that Event1001.com offers excellent value for money. Who else offers a global MICE portal aimed at assisting event planners, incentive companies, managing directors, and marketing and sales departments to find the right event and conference partners worldwide?”
