MICE Conversations: a podcast for the Meetings, Incentive Travel, Conferences and Events industry
MICE Conversations: a podcast for the Meetings, Incentive Travel, Conferences and Events industry
#12: 'MICE Conversations' - Ciaran Delaney, CEO/Founder hubli.com and MeetingsBooker
'MICE Conversations'. In this episode we talk with Ciaran Delaney, founder and CEO of hubli and MeetingsBooker. Today, Tuesday 7th September 2021, MeetingsBooker has rebranded as hubli. Find out more on https://www.hubli.com. hubli empowers organisations to give teams space to succeed. Employees can access 185,000 spaces on-demand with in-built controls on spend, safety and sustainability. Meetingsbooker.com has evolved to now include group stays, workspaces and enterprise management platform.
More about hubli, MeetingsBooker and Ciaran Delaney.
https://www.hubli.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ciarandel/
https://www.meetingsbooker.com/
Recorded Friday 3rd September 2021.
This pocast is also available as a video, on the TravelMedia.ie YouTube channel.
https://youtu.be/9Ivb42DqRIw
Topics and questions, timeline or video chapters.
00:00 - Intro and welcome.
00:30 - Background of MeetingBooker
01:42 - Was the recession the reason for setting it up in 09?
02:49 - Are there insights you can gain from what's happened over the last 18 months? Are there trends developing now that we're going back to work?
04:44 - Has there been an increase or decrease in meetings?
05:42 - A lot of organisations are hiring people remotely.
07:00 - White label route, in-house technology e.g. BP.
08:25 - hubli.com
10:01 - Evolution of MeetingsBooker
10:26 - Reason of re-branding & challenges
11:02 - Mission of hubli
13:30 - Are you targeting a certain audience? Is hubli.com suited to everyone?
14:46 - Where are you seeing take-up in terms of markets that are adapting to this new work environment?
16:04 - Future challenges
16:30 - Availability for spaces
18:02 - Focus of the business
20:13 - Where can we find out more about the product?
20:33 - Closing and outro.
Video transcript:
- So hello and welcome to "MICE Conversations." We are back after a short break from the summer. We were hopefully all taking some downtime during August. So it's great to be back and great to be back with Ciaran Delaney from MeetingsBooker. Ciaran, great to see you. Thank you for joining us today. I noticed some new branding on your top there, which we will discuss in a second. But first, if you could maybe just, for those who don't know you, maybe if you could give a little bit of background to MeetingsBooker, I know it was started in 2009 and before that you were with Tourism Ireland and also the City West Hotel here in Dublin. So if you could give us a little bit of background, Ciaran.
- Sure, yeah. So I started my career, Michael, with Tourism Ireland. So I spent seven years promoting Ireland as a tourism destination with Tourism Ireland in Italy actually, and also in Northern Europe. And I then took up a role as Director of Sales and Marketing for City West Hotel which is at the time a 1,000 bedroom conference hotel in Ireland. And yeah, and then in 2009, atthe brainwave of setting up my own business and becoming an entrepreneur. So I set up meetingsbooker.com in 2009 to really automate how people would discover places to meet and to allow them to easily book spaces online and to kind of automate that process and create a marketplace for MICE venues. Intrigued that you set it up in 2009, which obviously was the peak or height of the recession. Was there, I mean it's probably the best time to set up a business because if it doesn't work in a recession then it will never work. Was that the reason for setting up in 09?
- No. The hindsight is great. No, it just, I think it was just my career development, you know, it was the right time for me. I gained a lot of experience working internationally with Tourism Ireland and obviously at City West as well. So just, the timing was right for me personally, within the .......
(upbeat music)- So hello and welcome to "MICE Conversations." We are back after a short break from the summer. We were hopefully all taking some downtime during August. So it's great to be back and great to be back with Ciaran Delaney from MeetingsBooker. Ciaran, great to see you. Thank you for joining us today. I noticed some new branding on your top there, which we will discuss in a second. But first, if you could maybe just, for those who don't know you, maybe if you could give a little bit of background to MeetingsBooker, I know it was started in 2009 and before that you were with Tourism Ireland and also the City West Hotel here in Dublin. So if you could give us a little bit of background, Ciaran.- Sure, yeah. So I started my career, Michael, with Tourism Ireland. So I spent seven years promoting Ireland as a tourism destination with Tourism Ireland in Italy actually, and also in Northern Europe. And I then took up a role as Director of Sales and Marketing for City West Hotel which is at the time a 1,000 bedroom conference hotel in Ireland. And yeah, and then in 2009, atthe brainwave of setting up my own business and becoming an entrepreneur. So I set up meetingsbooker.com in 2009 to really automate how people would discover places to meet and to allow them to easily book spaces online and to kind of automate that process and create a marketplace for MICE venues. Intrigued that you set it up in 2009, which obviously was the peak or height of the recession. Was there, I mean it's probably the best time to set up a business because if it doesn't work in a recession then it will never work. Was that the reason for setting up in 09?- No. (chuckles) The hindsight is great. No, it just, I think it was just my career development, you know, it was the right time for me. I gained a lot of experience working internationally with Tourism Ireland and obviously at City West as well. So just, the timing was right for me personally, within the market it wasn't a good time to set up a business, but I think it taught me I suppose, to be very focused and quite focused on commercial in relation to launching and scaling the business. So it was probably a difficult time to launch a business, but actually it proved to be something that helped me in the long run, I think.- Yeah, well you're still here 12 years later, so what you've been doing has obviously you've been working. And obviously that gives you a unique perspective as we come out of not necessarily a recession, but something not too dissimilar in terms of the pandemic or as we move from pandemic to endemic. What insights, or are there insights that you can gain in terms of what's happened over the last 18 months and specifically now this is September 2021, are there trends developing as we all go back to work?- Yeah, so really like our platform is a global marketplace for booking MICE locations and venues and we've thousands of different people booking all over the world. So we do have a lot of data within the platform and certainly we're seeing quite a few interesting trends. I think that the proportion of meetings that are domestic and regional has increased significantly, which obviously isn't a surprise, but pre COVID, I think 37% of our reservations would be for domestic regional meetings and the rest was international, and that's shifted from 37% up to 78%. So there's a lot more regional meetings taking place. And also the size of meetings has shifted quite a bit as well. Pre COVID, I think the average size of meetings booked through our platform was 83 attendees, and that's dropped down to 17 with 40% of them now including a hybrid component to the meeting. So really I suppose, where we sit today it's, we're certainly in the kind of smaller area, segment of the market. The smaller meetings and events under 100 people. We're seeing a lot more regional activity and smaller hybrid meetings emerging. And I think that'll continue for a while until obviously things kind of stabilize globally when it comes to COVID.- And is smaller meetings as a result of people working from home, so therefore they're getting together more often and there's an increase in frequency of meetings, but also they're smaller 'cause teams are getting together on a regular basis just to have that kind of interaction that they've lost from having been in the office?- Yeah, like I think there's, traditionally if you look at business travel, there's normally the transient area which is kind of individuals booking flights and booking hotels. And then in other areas, obviously meetings and events, which is obviously is a key part. So typically business travel has kind of been, the motivation has been around those two types of events and then the individual travel. And I think what's emerging now is a kind of a third category which is more for kind of team and group travel. And a lot of that is coming from the remote workforce that's emerging and the distributed workforce. So a lot of people, a lot of organizations are now hiring people remotely, like Microsoft hired 25,000 people during the pandemic. Right? So imagine if you've hired 25,000 people who've never met,- Yeah.- Other people in the organization, right? So as we come out of COVID and the pandemic, organizations like them and countless others will be organizing a lot of MICE gatherings and events and meetings and offsites for employees and clients simply to reconnect and to meet in person and to drive innovation and creativity and relationships within the organization. So that's a whole new segment now that's going to emerge within the market driven by, I suppose, the distributed workforce that we all find ourselves in. And a lot of people expect will be part of the future of work and not just a kind of a temporary change.- Yeah. And tell me, I've used your platform or rather we as a company have used it to find meeting space, and that's what we're doing at the moment. We're all in a hybrid situation where we go into a rented or virtual office with the team when we can. But what I wasn't aware is that you've also gone down the white label route in terms of there's a lot of big corporates who've effectively brought your technology in-house. Can you talk to me about that?- Yeah. We increasingly, that's become a significant part of our business. Like a good example is BP. BP have their own version of our platform, which is white labeled. It's actually BP My Event. And they've over 10,000 employees around the world that have access to the platform to book meetings, workspaces and also group stays. And within that system, there are a lot of policy rules and controls to allow those employees to book in policy and also book in a safe location. So we actually have security alerts for the city the person is searching in and also a lot of safety protocols with the venues that they book in order to comply with the health and safety requirements for BP. So, yeah, so it's really a solution that allows large organizations to empower their teams to, I suppose connect in person and work from anywhere and succeed from anywhere, but also following safety and policy to ensure that that's a safe experience for the employee.- So let's not wait any longer 'cause I'm intrigued by the branding on your top there and I hadn't seen it before, but you've obviously been busy during the pandemic. So talk to me about the new company or the new brand that you've established, hubli.- Yeah, so like when I first started MeetingsBooker, the goal was to make it easier to book meeting spaces. But as over the years we've, as we've worked particularly with enterprise clients, we've discovered that actually booking group accommodation is also an area that's very manual. So we've actually over the last two years, built out a solution to book group stays for teams within our system. And also this year we've added the ability to book workspaces. So for somebody who's working from home, they could book a local workspace once a week via our platform. So I suppose MeetingsBooker has evolved and as part of that evolution, we've launched a new brand which is hubli, which will be, yeah, the brand we use from now for the business, also we'll maintain meetingsbooker.com, but Hubli I suppose is the new brand which is really about helping large organizations to empower their employees to succeed from anywhere, whether that's a meeting, a workspace or a group offsite. And it would allow us as we continue to innovate and add new functionality to the platform going forward as well. It's just a brand that we thought was, suits our stage of development for the business.- So it's not effectively a new company, it's an evolution of the old company or the existing MeetingsBooker.- Yeah, exactly.- Okay.- So we're still MeetingsBooker Limited and such, but yeah, and the same team and the same board, et cetera, it's just we have a new brand that we've launched which we feel better represents what we're doing now and how the business has evolved.- Okay, interesting. The challenge, I suppose you have then, and the reason for deciding to be down this road was MeetingsBooker was probably too descriptive of a brand and it probably pigeonholed you, so hubli obviously gives you so much more scope. But that's also reflective of the way the world has gone because people are working from home, they're working remotely, they're working hybrid, they're hiring meeting space on an individual basis. They're doing all of these things. And as you say this, where will the world takes us in the next few years, so this gives you the scope. Is that the logic?- Absolutely. Yeah. And that's what we do. Like it's a platform that allows people the find space to succeed. And that's the mission of our company and, you know, that means different things to different people at different times, you know? It can be a place, a workspace for the day to just focus and finish a presentation or even conduct a presentation in a different environment. Or it can be a team meeting for 10, 20 people, whatever the size to reconnect or indeed an offsite. So, group accommodation or a weekend somewhere for a team to use. So yeah, I think it's evolved and hubli, I think suits what we're doing and it gives us a broader, I suppose, use case. And you're right, I think MeetingsBooker is quite descriptive and again, when we started the business that's exactly what we were doing. But we've evolved a lot, we've, by working with companies like BP and even partners like we've, we work with American Express Global Business Travel, we powered their Meetings Express platform, and we also powered their new workspaces platform. Like that's, so we were evolving and I suppose our goal is to help companies give their teams a self-served solution that they can just access and book within policy and safety rules. And that can apply to a lot of different areas, not just meetings that comply to group accommodation and so on. So yeah, so it's a nice new direction, a new brand, and it's, we're excited to launch it now, Michael. And yeah, it's an exciting period for us as we're seeing a lot of growth, we're seeing a lot of big global companies looking for a solution in this area. And I think that ironically, the pandemic has obviously reduced meetings and reduced gatherings, but I think what it has done is shown, is kind of increased the need to have a system for this type of meeting and this type of smaller in-person connections that companies have.- Yeah.- And so, yeah, it's exciting.- You've mentioned... You've mentioned BP and you've mentioned American Express. They're big global brands but from a personal perspective as somebody who runs an SME, this strikes me also as a platform that would be very useful or accessible to someone in my position. Are you targeting a certain audience, or is this a platform that will literally work for everybody?- It'll work for everybody, but we're certainly seeing the bigger enterprise area just becoming a big, big part of what we're doing. Like this year, we've signed three pharmaceutical companies who are now gonna be using the solution globally for their meetings and their group stays in the workspaces. So I suppose the enterprise area is significant for us. And we've developed a product to suit the needs of those types of customers. But from a small and medium size organization perspective, absolutely. Like it's very easy to set up an account on hubli for 20 people and allow them to use the platform and book spaces within hubli as well. So it's kind of a dual approach, I suppose, you know, there's a mixture of the kind of smaller companies and then much larger global enterprise clients as well.- Yeah. So, we're both sitting in Dublin today, or I assume we're sitting in Dublin, I don't know where you are, but I'm in Dublin.- I am, yeah.- So, but obviously, this is a global product.- Yeah.- Where are you seeing kind of take up in terms of what markets are, are adopting let's say to this new work environment?- Yeah. We have 185,000 spaces on hubli around the world. So we've seen significant growth in the US over the last 12 months. So we're gonna be opening an office in the US early next year. So I think the US market is, like it's such a big market and I think that a lot of people have, it's been impacted by this distributed workforce. So I think that, I read that like rent, residential rents in San Francisco dropped by 27% in the last 12 months'cause people are leaving and going to Austin and Colorado. And so the US is a huge growth market for us. We've also a German language version of the platform as well, and we're launching a French language version also. So, yeah. So although we're based in Dublin, it's a global business. Like our two biggest markets will be the UK and the US as, yeah, so very much international perspective with the business, Michael.- Okay. And what challenges would you have going ahead? I mean, is sourcing product, as in sourcing properties, a challenge as, you know, I suppose, hotels adopt their product and become more flexible and open to this kind of working model or, I recently visited a hotel chain in Austria called Selena who very much target that kind of workforce in terms of having meeting spaces and so on. Is that a challenge going forward or is that happening very quickly, almost organically?- No, it's, listen, it's a key part of what we do. You know, you need to have good spaces available, especially globally, right? So working with big companies who have offices around the world. But I think we went through a process earlier in the, kind of the journey of the business where we were heavily focused on that, probably around four years ago. We had a team of like, a big team of people that were working with venues and adding venues to the platform. So today we already have all the major hotel groups, all the coworking providers. We recently added Industrious which are a kind of a really exciting co-working provider in the US. So there's a wide variety of spaces on the platform. I suppose, the main goal is just continue to roll that in different markets and really make sure there's choice. Like already on hubli, I think it's 48% of the bookings are to hotels and 52% are to non hotel locations. So, we've stadiums and business centers and museums that have meeting spaces that are available on the platform as well. So choice is always good. So, no, that's not, listen, that's something we're always focused on. I suppose, for now it's really just scaling the business. That's probably the biggest focus. It's kind of growing the enterprise clients and rolling them out effectively and scaling that is probably the biggest focus for us at the moment.- So there's obviously, I mean, I mentioned this is something you've done over the course of the pandemic, but obviously it's not just the pandemic, it's many years in the making.- Yeah.- It sounds like a considerable investment that you put into this.- Yeah. Listen, absolutely. Like when you create a business that is a marketplace and also has new technology, it's a big challenge'cause like you need to, like with BP, we're giving them an easier way to book, so that's new technology. We're also providing all the venues and the supply on the platform as well. So you have two areas you need to grow. So then, absolutely. So that's, we're around since 2009, and I think we've gone through a lot of the, we've put in the building blocks that you need. So we discussed inventory, but then there's also, just the technology and being able to book the meeting room online and pay with your credit card. Like that's a whole, that didn't exist a couple of years ago, right? We basically built that technology and also got the venues to embrace it. So yeah, it takes time. It takes time. But I think we've still got it and obviously we raised investment as a business. We've a great group of investors, VCs and also very smart angel investors who kind of are, you know, from travel technology and from the MICE area. So yeah, we've a good board and investors and team and it's, yeah, we're not finished yet. There's a lot to do and a lot to grow and a lot to build in the future as well.- Excellent. Well, look, congratulations. You know, having started my own business and pivoted and continue to adapt and develop over 20 years, I'm well aware of all the hard work that's involved. So I look forward to using the platform, but also watching your continued success. Where can people find out more about the product? Is it hubli.com?- Yeah, hubli.com. Absolutely. So, yeah. Visit hubli.com or happy to reach out to me on LinkedIn as well. Ciaran Delaney, I'm more than happy to, yeah, give our, share what we're doing and answer any questions people may have.- Excellent. Well, in the show notes for this, both as the podcast and also the YouTube, I will include all of those links. So the website and also your LinkedIn profile, Ciaran Delaney from MeetingsBooker and hubli.com. Thank you for joining us today.- Thanks, Michael. Thank you.(upbeat music)