o instant book or not to instant book ; that is the question . We live in a world where booking a holiday , making a restaurant reservation , and even buying a car , can be done in no more than 30-seconds on a mobile app . A decade ago , we could do all the same things , but from a laptop . For at least 15 years , booking things online has been the norm for so many of us , but why is it that we can ’ t book our meeting spaces online with the same ease ?

This was the subject of the Business Events And Meeting ’ s ( beam ) Instant Book Summit with venuedirectory . com , which took place in July .

The issue , it seems , is a combination of multiple factors : insufficient technology , agencies looking to retain their place in the supply chain and the logistical challenges of multiple add-ons such as catering and AV .

Michael Begley , CEO at venuedirectory . com , which was taken over by Cvent earlier in 2022 , got the conference underway by revealing that 2022 has already seen £ 173m of confirmed meetings and events business , compared with £ 282m for the whole of 2019 – the last uninterrupted year .

However , he outlined how current business challenges around staff and resources have impacted

“ Every booker wants is the easiest route to market – and as an agency it ’ s up to us to deliver added value ”

response times . RFPs can stretch a venue ’ s resources , so is instant book a solution ? Clearly , there are too many variables for a larger conference , so should such a thing enter the meetings industry , it would likely be for small meetings , or as Inntel ’ s CEO Douglas O ’ Neill described them : ‘ simple ’ meetings .

The corporate view Kate Scully , global business travel manager at Howden Group Holdings , told the room that if a simple meeting has a budget up to £ 5,000 , it will generally be handled by a PA . Such PAs are incredibly busy , nor are they necessarily going to be experienced event managers , and therefore the appeal of instant book is something

that would help them in their jobs .

Scully added : “ I would be happy to see venues listed on a booking platform , with instant access to support for any queries . This would make everything efficient and give us hours back .”

Scully noted that there would need to be an exception for bookings commanding a higher fee and acknowledged that there would be a knock-on effect for agencies in reducing the number of simple meeting business .

The agency view A panel of agency experts raised several points . While the broad consensus was that instant book should be embraced , the mechanics of how an agency plays