Search Engines Create Partnership
Staff -- Tradeshow Week, 7/10/2006
Two meeting industry online search engines, ConventionPlanit.com and VenueDirectory.com, have partnered to offer tradeshow and meeting planners access to a combined 28,000 facility listings in 153 countries on one Web site.
Planners will be able to search facilities worldwide through ConventionPlanit.com and the site's embedded link to VenueDirectory.com. Both sites are currently redesigning their home pages, which will create a link under the search menu for facilities.
Katherine Markham, principal and co-founder of ConventionPlanit.com, said the companies thought they could help each other, considering ConventionPlanit.com had access to considerably more meeting planners and VenueDirectory.com had the most information on facilities.
"We have more users and they have more listings," she said. "By teaming up, we can promote our own brand and the meeting planner can search for more destinations without leaving the site."
Through the partnership, planners can visit ConventionPlanit.com for access to the U.S.-based and international properties already on the site, plus an expanded set of listings available through VenueDirectory.com. Markham said the partnership gives planners a single Web portal and search engine.
VenueDirectory.com Managing Director Richard Parkin said his firm lists hundreds of properties in 14 major regions of the world, with individual country searches available within each region according to multiple meeting criteria such as location, hotel star ratings, type of venue, meeting rooms and room rates.
