Naboo had announced before the summer its intention to make acquisitions. Now it's official. The corporate seminar platform has announced the acquisition of Privateaser for Business (BizMeeting), its Venue Finder site specialising in organising events for groups. Naboo can count on the €7.5m it raised in February 2024 to complete its purchases. Founded just two years ago, this start-up has announced a record year in 2024, with "300% growth over 12 months", forcing it to recruit. 50 additional employees. With a database of 50,000 service providers (hotels, event venues, caterers, activity providers, transport companies, etc.), the site's monthly booking volume has now reached €3m, with a monthly increase of 20%. BizMeeting has won it new contracts with CAC40 and SBF120 companies, for which the agency has developed concierge and booking management services. Naboo already estimates that one in ten bookings comes from CAC40 companies, including Société Générale, Thales, Veolia and Arkema. SNCF Connect is also among its customers. Naboo has also embarked on an international expansion, setting up operations in Switzerland, Belgium and the UK.
A range of services for a turnkey solution
Naboo claims to be an innovative platform that offers companies a immediate, simplified booking of their event, total autonomy whatever the type and size of the event, one-stop access to all services. If necessary, advisers are on hand to help companies by making suggestions and negotiating rates and conditions. Customers also benefit from centralisation of event expenses and above all a carbon footprint of the event. Interviewed last July by Voyages d'Affaires, Maxime Eduardo, one of the co-founders of Naboo, told us that AI plays a major role in the search for productivity on his booking platform, for example by displaying " the four turnkey seminar proposals best suited to the customer's brief" . A way of improving the conversion rate. " The average basket is around €350 per person per day, i.e. around €15,000 for around forty participants." he confided at the time. He added: " Few bookings are made in traditional hotels, with 80% of our sales based on green residential seminars." . A trend that has been observed since the pandemic. Maxime Eduardo, Lucien Bredin, Antoine Servant and Jean-Louis Villeminot originally set up Naboo as a platform offering teleworking in the great outdoors.
Joy wants to become the GDS for events
Having divested itself of BizMeeting, the Joy group intends to concentrate on Joy.io, its technological solution designed for bar and restaurant managers to increase their visibility on the Internet, enable group bookings and benefit from optimised management of their events business. It now intends to become "the GDS (Global Distribution System) for events" by connecting restaurant owners with French travel and events agencies. It should be noted that Joy continues to use the Privateaser brand for its platform for booking evenings out with friends and corporate events in bars and restaurants,
