Book2meet
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Book2Meet
Hospitality
Limited Liability company
Belgium
Diversity, Service, Support, Fast and Flexible
Thierry Vermeiren
Benoit van der Maas
Thierry Vermeiren
Summary
Book2Meet is divided in two parts, the first part is offering small and medium sized companies to book meeting space online. The second part is the collaboration with multinationals offering a full integration from payments and reports to service and support on the correct level. This is to ensure that the whole spend of sometimes 15 million euros within Europe is correctly booked and followed-up correctly.
Background
The founder, Thierry Vermeiren gained a lot of experience and knowledge working in the hotel-business. While being the head of commercial departments, he was confronted year after year with the struggles of booking meeting spaces. There weren’t any hotels in the world that mentioned their rates for booking a meeting space. When a company would ask for the rates of a meeting, the hotel was able to charge them as much as they want. The founder was convinced that there should be another way to do this.
To finance the start of the company, Thierry Vermeiren and his colleague put together some of their savings to be able to get trough the first year. The plan was to write their business plan and create a prototype of the online platform to attract small private investors. The help of a private investor was crucial for the IT development. With the help of a small private investor they were able to create a proof of concept. With the proof of concept they found out that there were potential venues and customers, this was the confirmation of their business model. To expand the company they needed more capital so they asked their investor if he was wiling to provide more funding. The investor declined because he was an investor who only provided seed capital. After this news the founder began searching for venture capitalists, unfortunately venture capitalists are almost non-existing in Belgium so the search went on abroad.
After a while they’ve found a big venture capitalist in the United States that believed in the business model and had the time and resources to fund the company. The founders needed a rather large amount of capital because they wanted to offer their service not only on the Belgian market but on twelve different markets simultaneously.
Mission
The company wants to make every square meter on earth bookable on a transparent, flexible and technological way.
Vision
As largest pan-European online bookable marketplace of meeting space, we are aiming together with our clients and suppliers to combine transparent pricing, time availability and diverse offer dedicated to business.
Values
Creativity, transparency, responsibility
Business Model
Book2Meet uses an innovative businessmodel, the biggest innovation isn’t the service they offer but in how they offer this service. Booking meeting spaces isn’t a new service but they way Book2Meet offers this service is quite innovative. Unlike other companies, Book2Meet offers meeting spaces in all different segments from large hotels to small business centers, all with real time availability.
It doesn’t stop there, Book2Meet provides complete packages. For a business meeting, Book2Meet can arrange accommodation and transport and everything else that is needed for a business meeting. By offering a complete package, companies using this service are able to see the total cost of those meetings. Normally the expenses for meetings are spend on various accounts, therefore it’s very difficult for companies to see how much they actually spend on meetings.
Because Book2Meet is still a young company, there aren’t many procedures. Arranging meeting can be done in a very quick and flexible way. Today, Book2meet takes a 10% flat rate commission on the whole spend that is done trough their online platform but that is about to change soon.
Book2Meet is busy working on business model without commission, in the future they want to become a kind of free marketplace. Thierry Vermeiren is convinced that the use of commissions will fall apart in the near future. A travel website like without commission has a huge potential to overtake a site like Booking.com in a very short period of time.
Growth
The growth regarding the amount of spaces offered is quite good but they want to keep that growth proportional with the amount of clients to maintain a good balance. The international expansion is not going as fast as the founder expected. Before expanding outside of Europe it’s important to secure their business within Europe.
Customers
Book2Meet targets every professional that is in need of a meeting space. They have small startups as client but also large multinationals.
Competitors
Most of the competition is indirect, around 60 European companies offer some kind of same service but they all focus on one segment for example office centers. Examples of these competitors are Birdoffice, Sharedesk and Spacebase. There’s also some direct competition, around four European companies target multiple segments like Book2Meet does.
There are some companies that tried tot copy the businessmodel of Book2Meet, the founder doesn’t see this as a thread. When your platform is on the internet, it’s easy to copy the businessmodel but copying the work and effort is almost impossible especially in a shorter time. One German company, ‘Okanda’ did their best to copy Book2Meet. Their website is almost identical but their success is far from identical.
Conclusion
The biggest opportunity for Book2Meet is to gain a bigger market share. Book2Meet’s potential market is worth around 20 trillion euros, even gaining a 1% market share would be enormous.Book2Meet is also aware of their threats, a big threat is the economy. Tragic events like the one in Brussels have a direct impact on their business.
Another thread is the growth of the company, controlled growth is easy in traditional companies. But internet-based companies can grow exponential, with an almost unrealistic growth curve. This growth can make the company much better but it can also completely destroy it.
Thierry Vermeiren shared his best advice for starting entrepreneurs:
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Keep believing in your business
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Make sure you don’t see it too big
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Make sure to start with a minimum viable product
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Never forget to base your business on customers
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The customers are the people that bring your product on the market
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Surround yourself with the people that add important value to your company
The biggest problems Thierry Vermeiren faced when starting Book2Meet were about time and money. Sometimes you don’t have time to do things you have to do, to find the right people and this could be a problem. Most of the starting entrepreneurs are people with a good idea, but without enough financial knowledge. There should always be somebody within the company that is able to handle the financial part.
Within two years, Book2Meet wants to consolidate the European market and continue to grow as marketplace for space.
Posted on 12/05/2016