Bizly Acquires Kapow to Expand Group Dining Capabilities


Skift Take

Bizly has made a strategic acquisition that adds group dining to its vision of becoming the leading global platform for booking events of all types.

Venue booking and meeting management platform Bizly announced Tuesday its acquisition of group dining platform Kapow from Hello! Destination Management in a cash and equity-based deal. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Due to decentralized booking and limited oversight, group dining has become a challenging spend category for many companies. The acquisition addresses this specific pain point in corporate event management.

Bizly sees excellent potential in group dining, and it has seen growing demand for smaller gatherings around larger events. "In today's loneliness epidemic, people attend events not just for content but to build real relationships. The most meaningful moments often happen in the private dinners, happy hours, and intimate gatherings that occur around these larger events," said Ron Shah, CEO of Bizly.

The deal combines Bizly's AI-powered meetings platform with Kapow's network of restaurants and venues. Kapow, which previously raised over $40 million in venture funding, has served thousands of corporate clients since its founding in 2011.

Kapow has had several owners in recent years. Cvent acquired the company in 2018, followed by Hello! Destination Management's purchase in 2020 during the pandemic.

Bizly has received investments from various private investors, including hedge funds and venture capital firms. Current investors include Convene and Encore.

The integration aims to give travel and procurement managers better visibility into this growing expense area. While no full-time staff will transfer in the acquisition, Bizly will retain some former Kapow team members as contractors. The company plans to fully integrate Kapow's marketplace into its core platform by Q3 2025, phasing out the standalone Kapow brand while maintaining venue identification markers.

Up Next

Destinations

How Visit Atlantic City Is Rethinking What Blended Travel Really Means

Many destinations still separate blended travel into distinct categories: There’s business time and leisure time before or after the meeting or event. But in reality, this isn’t how meeting attendees view their trips. Visit Atlantic City is making major changes to deliver a more unified experience and challenge the traditional boundaries between work and play.