Cvent.com review

A business associate / friend of mine asked me to do a review of this site since I have some experience in ordering stuff needed for exhibitions and trade shows for your booth. I will focus on their Event Management products/services since this is their service we would use the most. You can reach Cvent.com here if you have any inquires.

It starts by you filling out some forms about your company and yourself. click the "Next" button to continue kind of stuff. Since I'm doing the Event Management thing it lets me search four types of venues. Sleeping rooms, meeting rooms, lunch/dinner meetings and service providers. I'll use the Communicasia 2009 show as our test subject and since I will be using a test account from Cvent.com I really cannot order anything, thus 'no harm, no foul'.

First I will see what trying to get room pricing is like. I whip up a new RFP and go through several screens of Q&A regarding my location and venue of choice until I get to search the hotels. I get back over eighty results with a picture of the property and a blurb about the hotel for each one. The fist thing I noticed was lacking was a distance to the convention center from the hotels. We like to walk to the show in the mornings so proximity to the convention center is important to us. You also don't get pricing immediately. You submit your RFP and expect it back by a certain date so you can base your decisions on it. Personally I would go with expedia.com, travelocity.com, or whatever your choice-of-the-day might be.

Next I thought about ordering electricity for the booth. I thought that would fall under the 'Service Providers' category so I clicked on it. It listed over a half-dozen providers such as Entertainment and Food Service, but alas no electrical. So I performed searches of the Singapore area foe entertainment and food service and came up empty handed also. I myself would use myfreemanonline.com to procure any services needed for the show as well as stuff for the booth.

In all fairness the upcoming show I used was in a distant city-state and maybe Cvent does stuff in the Americas a bit differently. They claim to be an event planner so maybe I'm using them as the wrong tool. Like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. I was told by a co-worker that their web surveying software works pretty good.