If there is one area of travel that has regained strength and vigour recently, it is undoubtedly meetings and events. The professionals are unanimous on this point, with volumes well above those of 2019, and some at historic levels. Bird Office reported the following figures for May alone1,800 seminars booked on the platform, representing threefold growth since 2019. " Even if it's difficult to say how much of this figure is due to organic growth and how much to market growth, given that we have acquired a large number of customers" says Arnaud Katz, CEO of Bird Office.
Long prevented by the pandemic, business meetings are now taking place in a new business environment, where the widespread use of teleworking and flexoffice must be counterbalanced. " The market is becoming more interesting than ever with changes in usage which mean that B2B events are becoming strategic for companies in order to keep their employees engaged, to deal with the current recruitment issue and the war for talent".says Arnaud Katz.
All these factors will support market growth and explain why, in this buoyant climate, Bird Office has decided to merge its business with that of another start-up specialising in B2B events, Kactus. The deal, backed by a €10 million fund-raising operation financed by Eurazeo, BNP Paribas Développement and Raise, will give rise to a new entity with sales of €80 million and around a hundred employees. The two start-ups now have 30,000 customers in totalThese include more than 10,000 repeat customers and around thirty framework contracts, including eight with CAC 40 companies. Between them, their offering covers more than 8,000 partner venues in Franceincluding 40% of hotels, 30% of event venues and 30% of business centres and coworking spaces.
However, the activities of the two players do not overlap, Bird Office, a range of urban venues and a technology platform enabling small meetings to be booked live. On the other, Kactus is more focused on seminars in the countryside with a tool that can be used to question different suppliers and receive proposals from event venues. The complementary nature of these solutions is designed to cover the entire value chain and respond to changes in the market where, according to Arnaud Katz, "two trends are emerging".
On the one hand, there is a growing demand for green seminarswith teams leaving for two or three days reconnect away from their everyday lives. " A business objective, but above all a human one" stresses the Bird Office CEO. On the other hand, as employees increasingly work from home, Arnaud Katz notes " recurring working days together, at a venue in the city. "
In response to various expectations, the aim of this merger is to create aa key tech platform in the MICE marketThe aim is also to extend this expertise across Europe within the next five years. The ambition is also to extend this expertise across Europe within five years, with already a presence in Switzerland, Belgium and the UK, albeit still limited. While the Bird Office and Kactus platforms will initially operate in parallel, the new entity is working on a new brand and the emergence of a new platform bringing together their two offerings. " It will be ready for the end of the year" says Bird Office's CEO.
