Groupize Acquires The Vendry, Adding Supplier Marketplace to Meetings Management Offering

Meeting and travel management platform Groupize announced Wednesday the acquisition of The Vendry, a venue and vendor marketplace. The acquisition adds more than 73,000 venues and vendors to Groupize’s existing booking engine of 190,000 hotels globally aimed at corporate planners.

The Vendry said it is used by 150,000 event planners monthly. It also runs a popular professional community on Slack for corporate event professionals. 

The Vendry will be integrated into Groupize by the end of the year, and going forward, the venue and vendor marketplace will be known as The Vendry by Groupize.

“All of our 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,” said Groupize CEO Alisa de Gaspe Beaubien.

The Vendry founder, Daphne Hoppenot, will join the Groupize Executive Team as a Strategic Advisor. She said the venues and vendors on the acquired platform will benefit the most in the short term. “Our suppliers are likely to see the most immediate impact, benefitting from Groupize’s hundreds of enterprise customers, including five of the Fortune 25, who regularly use Groupize to source venues for their group meetings and events. For our suppliers, this means quickly unlocking access to a new set of high-quality leads and bookings,” Hoppenot said.

The Vendry received the Skift Meetings Award for Best Site-Sourcing Solution in 2023. Hoppenot spoke at the inaugural Skift Meetings Forum in September. 

Hoppenot said the acquisition started as a strategic partnership conversation that evolved into something more. “After months of trying to figure out ways we could partner, it became clear that merging our products was the best way to build something really incredible for our mutual user bases.”

Hoppenot shared with Skift Meetings her reasoning for selling the company she founded and secured $8 million in funding.

“It was clear to us at The Vendry that to build upon our success with venue search we needed to get deeper in the larger meetings and group travel space. We believe that The Vendry is the first marketplace to successfully serve planners who are looking for private dining rooms, rooftops, and other unique venues and vendors. But we also couldn't ignore the fact that in terms of dollars, most corporate spending happens with the big hotel groups and airlines,” she said.