Would you ever consider making a bid for a seat at a real conference via an online site, the way www.conferencebay.com offers? If not, what stops you from doing so?
With its’ fresh new paint job (website revamp) Conference Bay offers its customers the opportunity to make a bid for a conference seat on its website. You get the opportunity to state the (maximum) price you’re willing to pay and the date by when you want to hear back from Conference Bay. Conference Bay then informs the conference organiser of the bid and brokers the deal. EASY Right !
The beauty of the system is that event organisers can sell off their last remaining seats and you can get access to conferences at much better prices. It’s kinda the eBay of Event Management !
Recently iIwas sent a release announcing conference bay’s move onto the global stage ! See below.
Conference Bay goes global
Conference Bay, the Internet portal aimed at the conference industry that was launched last September, has opened its platform to conference organisers from all over the world, thereby increasing the appeal of the portal both to these organisers and to potential conference visitors. At the same time, the company has unveiled a completely new website with a fresh look & feel, making it easier for customers to find what they are looking for.
Conference Bay started out as a portal aimed at Asia Pacific but has seen such growth that this development became inevitable. Over 300 conference organisers now use Conference Bay to list their events and more than 600 conferences were listed in the first half year of operations.
Whilst the founders wanted to focus the first year of operations on Asia Pacific, it became clear very soon that the site had global appeal: “We received e-mails from conference organisers from all over the world and decided to open up to any English language conference worldwide in order to satisfy this demand. We now have conferences listed in more than 30 countries and 70 cities. In the 6 months of operations we have had more than 600 conferences listed, which is much more than we had expected”, says Arnout Mostert, Founder & CEO of Conference Bay.
“The new website was developed because we found that too many people saw us as purely a listing of events”, says Arnout. “With this new look, there can’t be any doubt about what the customer can gain by visiting http://www.conferencebay.com – they can save money by making a bid for a seat at a conference”, adds Frank Bomers, Co-Founder & Managing Director.
Conference Bay offers a unique feature in addition to its listing of conferences by topic and by location: anyone can make a bid for a seat at a conference by stating the price they’re willing to pay. “It’s pretty much ‘take it or leave it’ for the conference organiser, and so far we have mostly seen ‘take it’ ”, says Arnout. The bidding concept solves the problem of unsold seats at conferences, which occurs at most events. Conference organisers want to fill as many seats as they can in the last few weeks before the event starts, which often leads them to employ call centers or send out mass emails. With the ConferenceBid™ system that was developed by Conference Bay, organisers get to pick the bids they find most interesting (they get to see the job title, industry and work country of the bidding party) and hereby increase not only their revenues but also the diversity of their events. “The average successful bid lies somewhere between 40-60% of the full ticket price”, adds Frank, “which we think is a very fair amount for a last minute offer. Both the organiser and the delegate are better off and so far we have only heard very positive reactions. Many people who otherwise would not visit a conference are now becoming more interested in doing so”.
The new look & feel was developed by a design team consisting of Ogilvy RedCard and iBall Studios in Singapore.
The newly developed homepage is at http://www.conferencebay.com. Clarity and simplicity help the customer “get it” immediately.
Conference Bay website is best viewed with Internet Explorer
For more information:
Conference Bay Pte Ltd
Arnout Mostert – 15 Mohamed Sultan Road #03-00 – 238964 Singapore – +65 67357445
arnout [at] conferencebay.com
APLINK - itsReal 
Great story, thank you for this. The are some differences with eBay though. At eBay the winner takes it all so only the highest bidder gets the required product/service. At Conference Bay various bidders with different prices can (for various reasons) be accepted, so it’s more like Priceline.
Great story, thank you for this. The are some differences with eBay though. At eBay the winner takes it all so only the highest bidder gets the required product/service. At Conference Bay various bidders with different prices can (for various reasons) be accepted, so it’s actually a little bit more like Priceline.
Thanks Jesse
Frankly haven’t heard it before. Since having my http://www.rhubcom.com turbomeeting last month..I did miss many of the exporters meetings because of seats unavailabilities. Now Conference Bay seems to be a good solution to bid for the meeting seat on the importance basis.
Seems unfortunate that conference seats cannot simply be sold for face value. Why would we want to encourage bidding wars for conferences that are supposed to push the industry and the individuals forward? I would rather just load up a stream and watch the conference from home…at least that way I know I am not paying more than my peers for the same experience.