Groupize, a provider of meetings and events technology, announced the acquisition of The Vendry, an events marketplace. The acquisition, according to the announcement, adds more than 70,000 venues and vendors to Groupize’s existing booking engine of 190,000 hotels globally.

The Vendry is utilized by over 150,000 event planners each month, according to the announcement, making it one of the most popular venue-sourcing platforms for corporate event planners and a source of highly qualified traffic to supplier partners.

The marketplace will be known as The Vendry by Groupize. The integration of The Vendry into Groupize will happen by the end of the year.

Groupize customers, said the announcement, will gain the ability to shop for unique venues for off-sites, day meetings, dining events, cocktail parties and more from within the same solution that they they use to manage group hotel bookings, attendee management and travel logistics.

Benefits of the arrangement, according to the announcement, include:

• Global venue and hotel supplier content: The Vendry will enhance Groupize’s offerings with a diverse inventory of venues and vendors, and these suppliers will benefit from the combined volume of Groupize enterprise customers.
• AI-powered response: The Vendry’s intelligent use of AI for venue information acquisition and venue response with concierge services delivers fast responses and efficiencies, delivering daily content updates.
• Streamlined meeting management: Groupize empowers the entire vendor sourcing process, from searching suppliers and generating bids to quote management. It also supports managing the entire life cycle of a meeting by including features like room block management, instant hotel booking, registration, group and guest travel, ticketing, event app and expense management, all within a centralized workspace.

Daphne Hoppenot, founder of The Vendry, will join the Groupize executive team as a strategic advisor. She said that “over the past several months as we’ve gotten to know the Groupize team, I’ve consistently walked away from our conversations believing that I finally found a company that felt just as passionate as our team about supporting corporate meeting and event planners with better technology to help them bring people together.”

Groupize CEO Alisa de Gaspe Beaubien said: “We’re excited to bring this innovative technology into the Groupize platform, accelerating our mission to transform the way meetings and events are managed. This acquisition accelerates our timelines on delivering a global solution to plan and manage exceptional meeting and event experiences.” She added that all the company’s enterprise customers, particularly those in industries like life sciences, “have a very high volume of gatherings in non-hotel venues and will benefit from staying within the Groupize platform to manage all of their venue needs.”