British weddings a match made in heaven for brothers

Eventovate was formed in 2009, offering hotels in the area of event management a cloud-based option. Last year it secured €700,000 in funding. And now its founders are setting their eyes on the British market, writes Trish Dromey.

OFFERING an internet-based service that allows hotels take a hi-tech approach to wedding planning, Dublin company Eventovate is now actively wooing new business in Britain.

One of a small number of companies offering a cloud-based solution to hotels in the event management space, Eventovate has ambitious plans international growth, starting with our closest neighbours.

“There are 12,500 hotels with 275,000 weddings a year in the UK. That market is worth £48 million (€55m) and represents a huge opportunity for us,” says Eventovate chief executive Jonathan Ruane — who co-founded the company with his brother Jason in 2009.

Identified by Enterprise Ireland as a high potential start-up in 2010, the company raised €700,000 earlier this year to fund its move into the export market and is in discussions with a number of hotel chains in Britain.

Employing a staff of seven, Eventovate aims, over the course of the next three years, to increase this to 20 or 25 and to achieve a turnover of €3m.

The company is aiming to get a foothold in the market with the event management solution and, in the long term, offer a wide range of cloud-based services to the hotel industry.

When the Ruane brothers began looking for a business idea in 2009, they identified cloud computing as a growing sector and picked the hotel industry because they believed it offered particularly good scope for this type of solution.

“Huge amounts of money are being spent by hotels on IT. They have hundreds of thousands of euros worth of technology in basements, which they need someone to manage. IT in this sector is poorly managed and poorly serviced — we saw this as a market which could be disrupted,” says Jonathan.

Researching the hotel industry, he identified a gap in the event management area and decided a cloud-based solution in this niche was a good way of getting a foothold.

A business graduate who worked with Proctor & Gamble as a brand manager in London, Jonathan returned to Ireland in 2008 to look for a business idea.

He and his brother Jason, a physics and computers graduate who worked with Intel in Israel, had always intended setting up a company together, and by 2009 they had the necessary experience with multinationals to go ahead and do it.

Jonathan considered dozens of business ideas before settling on event management software. Jason joined him in setting up the company in Dublin and employed contract staff to help develop the solution.

“We launched on the market in the summer of 2010 and by the end of the year had signed up 25 customers, including the K Club, the Carlton Group, the Malton in Killarney and the Rochestown Hotel in Cork,” he says.

He adds that the company’s event management software has been designed to offer hotels a way of increasing revenue and managing costs.

“It records and tracks enquiries for events such as weddings; manages and processes procedures and includes customer conversion tools, task automation, performance analysis and management reporting,” says Jonathan.

One of the selling points for the service is that it allows the hotel to offer some extras to the happy couple, who can use it to arrange seating plans, manage their RSVPs and develop a wedding website.

Despite launching in the market during the depths of recession, Jonathan says business has gone well in Ireland and sales are continuing to grow, although the market is relatively small, with 1,000 hotels on the whole island and around 30,000 weddings per year.

In its first year of trading, the company was recognised by Enterprise Ireland as one of its high potential start-ups and listed in the TechCrunch Euro Top 100.

Enterprise Ireland provided some of the €700,000 funding which was announced in the summer.

Investment also came from the Bank of Ireland start-up and emerging sectors equity fund, managed by Delta Partners, and the AIB seed capital fund, managed by the Dublin Business Innovation Centre.

Although it is now focusing on the British market, Eventovate has long-term designs on the market in continental Europe, which has an estimated value of €260m.

As part of the plan to develop the British market, Eventovate is now working with a marketing company to commercialise the technology there. Plans for 2012 will include the launch of some new event-related products.

Eventovate is currently recruiting with a view to employing three or four more people, although it is experiencing difficulties finding staff with the necessary skills and experience.