As the exhibit hall opened on Tuesday, October 16 at the IMEX America show in Las Vegas, representatives from event-technology firm Social Tables were spotted in the booth for Cvent, conferring with some of the roughly 3,200 meeting-planner attendees making their way around the show floor. Shortly thereafter, the two firms announced that Cvent, a multifaceted event-software platform, had acquired Social Tables, which offers a collaborative, real-time room-diagramming and event-seating product presently used by one in three full-service hotels in North America. With Cvent's acquisition, though, that number is expected to increase significantly.
Founded in 2011, Social Tables already offers the world's largest database of to-scale function space and presently services 100,000 events each month. Social Tables' collaboration functionality allows planners to tap into a venue's system to examine room set-up possibilities, measure the distance between walls and objects, and amend configurations. The software allows venue personnel to see the changes immediately and weigh in with comments or concerns. Once room configurations are settled, planners can then create seating charts and even monitor check-in status as guests arrive. Overall, "a process that used to be manual and involve a lot of time-consuming back-and-forth between planner and property is simplified through our product," notes Erin O'Boyle, enterprise sales director.
As Social Tables and Cvent now tap into a pool of combined client data, Social Tables will evolve over time to offer upgraded functionality. “With Social Tables, we can offer new ways for our event and hospitality customers to work better together to manage events," says Reggie Aggarwal, CEO of Cvent.
