AI-powered venue booking is here
The AI startup Nowadays promises to take the worry out of booking individual venues for your events. It boasts a search engine featuring more than 300,000 venues and event locations, with most of the work handled on your behalf by an AI-powered virtual assistant called Ina.
The platform
The starting point is similar to many other venue-finding platforms. Users first sign in to the platform and fill out an event intake form. This form includes details such as budget, number of attendees, and venue preferences.
The platform then draws on its global database, which includes hotels, event spaces, private restaurants, and unconventional venues. The system's user interface resembles a dating app, which is refreshing and easy to grasp. The AI is also trained to flag potential issues with destinations to users, such as weather problems or a major event causing a price surge.
Once the user chooses which properties they want to get a quote from, Ina (the AI-powered virtual assistant) takes over. She sends out requests for proposals (RFPs) and then collects and sorts the responses, extracting and standardizing the quote data.
Ina has been trained to request certain concessions, which is why she also negotiates with venues at least to some extent.
While RFP offers can easily be standardized, prices often cannot. Parsing email communication into standardized and normalized comparison tables is an impressive and innovative use of AI. The platform lets users view all the exchanged emails and the original RFP.
Venue and hotel managers may not be aware of Ina's digital self, but responding to automated quotes is standard practice for most hotel and venue sales staff. Nowadays' human team monitors Ina's communication and can step in when needed.
The potential and limitations of AI
The AI did not build the platform's extensive database from scratch. In this respect, Nowadays relied on partnerships with event agencies and CVBs. Regardless, the AI continuously organizes and updates this data, thereby ensuring high accuracy at the same time. Partner agencies also use a white-labeled version of Nowadays, thus contributing to the upkeep of the database.
While a list of 300,000 venues is impressive - Cvent's supplier network can boast the same number - the most impressive part is the use of AI to interact with venues via email. This means the platform's value to planners does not depend solely on the size of the venue database. The AI also helps maintain the venue database, again through email interactions. It asks convention and visitors bureaus (CVBs) and venues for additional suggestions when they don't have capacity. It then continues the email chain to gather contact information and venue specifications.
Handling large and complex events poses a specific challenge. The platform can manage events such as conferences with multiple breakout rooms, because all of them are usually booked through the venue. Only non-standard supplier requirements present difficulties. Specific entertainment or rentals from non-standard providers, such as live painters or classic car rentals, are not set up as standardly as hotels and venues, which makes it harder for the AI to be trained on them.
Who is the platform for?
The main client profile is assistants and executives who are not full-time event planners. These people often handle event planning on top of their regular duties. So far, Nowadays' clients appreciate the platform's transparency and efficiency. They also appreciate the detailed cost breakdown and the payment process using a single link.
The main users, however, are not full-time event planners. They are often executive assistants or chiefs of staff who have to juggle multiple responsibilities.
Plans for the future
In addition to venue booking, Nowadays also offers so-called "flight sizing," which gives clients an estimate of the total cost of holding an event at various locations, including airfare, accommodation, and catering. Clients can then track these against the actual costs.
The company is developing sustainability features for its "flight sizing" function, which will enable the calculation of CO2 emissions for various event locations. In addition, the platform plans to expand its supplier database and further automate the event planning process to increase its value.
It currently fits into the broader trend of organizations using AI tools to boost efficiency. As AI technology develops, tools like Nowadays could attract businesses seeking to optimize operations and reduce the logistical burden. With its ability to automate and streamline venue booking, this platform is a well-founded use case, at least for simple event venue bookings.
