Conference Bay goes global

PR Log (Press Release) – Mar 03, 2008 – Conference Bay (http://www.conferencebay.com), the Internet portal aimed at the conference industry that was launched last September, has unveiled a brand new look & feel. At the same time, the company has opened up the portal to conference organisers all over the world, thereby increasing the appeal of the portal both to these organisers and to potential conference visitors. 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.
 
“The new look & feel was developed because we found that too many people saw us as purely a listing of events”, says Arnout Mostert, Founder & CEO of Conference Bay. “With this new look, there can’t be any doubt about what the customer can gain by visiting our website, which is saving 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 to do so”.

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.

The new homepage was developed by a design team consisting of Ogilvy RedCard and iBall Studios in Singapore.