Invented by Borrows; Lindsey, Davis; Kelsey, Cvent, Inc.

Event planning is a big piece of the pie for hotels and venues. But planning can be hard when you can’t see what your rivals are doing. A new patent application promises to change that. This article will help you understand what makes this event planning invention stand out, why it matters, and how it works. We’ll break everything down into simple, clear language.

Background and Market Context

Hotels and event venues rely on meetings, conferences, and group bookings for a big chunk of their income. In the United States, about a third of a hotel’s revenue can come from these group events. When you think about all the money spent on sleeping rooms, meeting spaces, food and drinks, and special equipment for events, it’s easy to see why winning group business is so important.

To win these group bookings, venues and hotels take part in a process called Requests for Proposals, or RFPs. Here, event planners send out requests to different venues, asking for bids on things like price, space, and services. Hotels then reply with their offers, hoping to win the business. The event planner picks one venue, and the event is held there.

But here’s where things get tricky for hotels. While they know when they win or lose an event, they usually don’t know who actually won if it wasn’t them. They also don’t have a way to see which events their rivals are getting, how much those events are worth, or what trends are happening across the market. This lack of insight makes it hard for hotels to figure out how they stack up against the competition or to plan better for future events. Without this information, venues must guess about what their rivals are doing, which is not good for business.

As the meetings and events industry keeps growing, the need for smart, data-driven planning has become very clear. Event planners want more than just a list of available spaces; they want to know if a venue is popular, if it’s winning big events, and how it compares to others. Venues, on the other hand, want to know what they’re missing and how they can improve their offers to win more business. The industry is asking for a smarter way to share and use event data, all while keeping sensitive information private and secure.

The new patent application steps into this space by offering a system that shares awarded RFP data (information about past and future events that have actually been booked at each venue) among venues, but only with the right permissions. It even uses this data to predict future events and help venues plan better.

Scientific Rationale and Prior Art

Let’s talk about how things were done before this invention, and why a new approach was needed. In the past, hotels and venues would keep their event information close to the chest. They might share some details with industry partners, but there was no real system for sharing real-time RFP awards or for comparing performance among a set of competitors, which is called a “comp set.”

Some tools let venues track their own bookings and see general industry trends, but these tools did not show exactly what events other venues were winning or losing. You might be able to buy market reports from research companies, but these are often outdated and don’t give the fine details about dates, event types, or values. There have been online platforms where planners can send RFPs to many venues at once, but again, only the winning venue knows the outcome. The losing venues stay in the dark.

The main problem with old systems was that they didn’t connect the dots between all the data. They could not match up which events were happening at which venues, on which dates, and for how much money. They also didn’t have a way to show venues how they compared to just their direct rivals — the comp set — instead of the whole market.

Another missing piece was prediction. While many industries use data and machine learning to forecast what might happen, event planning tools for venues rarely did this. Venues had to rely on gut feelings, past experience, or basic spreadsheets to guess which events might come their way.

Some platforms offered dashboards or calendars, but these usually only showed your own bookings, not those of your competitors. And with privacy concerns, venues were not willing to share sensitive event or financial data unless they could control who saw it.

In short, the old way of doing things left big gaps:

– Venues could not see who actually won each event if it wasn’t them.
– There was no easy way to compare performance with a comp set.
– Data about events was scattered and not used to its full potential.
– No system offered predictions about future events based on real market data.

What was needed was a secure, flexible, and smart system that let venues share and see awarded RFP data, compare it with their chosen competitors, and use this data to look ahead and plan better. The new patent tackles all of these needs in a fresh way.

Invention Description and Key Innovations

Now let’s dig into what this new event planning system does, and why it matters.

At its heart, the system is a smart software platform. It uses a computer processor and special instructions (software) to collect, organize, and display data about events that have been awarded to venues, both in the past and for the future. Here’s how the system works, step by step:

First, it collects awarded RFP data from many venues. This data includes the dates of events, the names, the venues where they were held, and in some cases, financial details like the cost or budget.

Each venue can build its own “comp set,” which is a group of competing venues it wants to compare itself against. The system lets each venue decide who is in its comp set. This is important because different venues might care about different rivals.

The system only shares sensitive event data if a venue has agreed (opted in) to share its own data. This creates a “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours” setup. If you want to see your rivals’ data, you must also share your data with them. This makes venues feel safer about sharing information.

When a venue logs in, it can see a clear view of awarded RFP data for venues in its comp set. This data can be shown in two main ways: a list view or a calendar view. The list view helps venues sort and filter events by things like cost, date, or event type. The calendar view lets venues see what events are happening, or happened, on each day, at each venue. This makes it easy to spot slow periods, busy days, or chances to win more business.

The system also allows event planners to submit new RFPs and decide whether to share these with all venues or just a chosen few. If a planner agrees, their contact information can also be shared, making it easy for venues to respond or ask questions.

But one of the most exciting parts of this system is how it uses all of this data to train a prediction model. By looking at patterns in past awarded events, the system’s model can forecast future events — suggesting what types of events might be coming, when they might happen, and at which venues. These predictions can help venues plan marketing, set prices, or target certain dates for outreach.

The platform is flexible. It can pull in public event data, such as events listed on public calendars or found by smart data tools. Public events can be marked clearly, so everyone knows their source.

All of this is wrapped in a user-friendly, web-based interface. Venues and planners can log in, manage their profiles, set sharing rules, and see the data they care about. Smart filters, search tools, and labels make it easy to find what you need.

The key innovations here are:

– Secure, opt-in sharing of awarded RFP data among venues
– Custom comp set views for each venue
– Flexible displays (list or calendar) for easy data review
– Machine learning predictions based on real awarded event data
– Ability to bring in public event data and label its source
– Simple controls for sharing and privacy
– Direct links between planners and venues, with sharing rules for contact info

This system gives venues a clear window into their true competitive landscape. They can see what events are being won by which rivals, compare performance, and plan smarter for the future. Planners benefit too, since they can better understand which venues are active and responsive, and can opt to share RFPs more widely if they wish.

The invention stands out because it solves a real pain point in the events industry: the lack of clear, actionable event data across a competitive set, delivered in a way that respects privacy and encourages sharing only among willing partners.

Conclusion

The new patented system for event planning is a big step forward for hotels and venues that want to win more group business. By making it safe and easy to share awarded event data, compare against a chosen comp set, and use smart predictions, this platform helps venues see where they stand and what they can do next. It gives planners more choice and venues more power to plan. With its mix of privacy, flexibility, and smart data use, this invention is set to change how group events are planned and won in the real world.

Click here https://ppubs.uspto.gov/pubwebapp/ and search 20250217747.