Aventri Success Story: Northstar Travel Group

Automating the matching process for vendors and attendees has optimized appointments and increased productivity for events

Northstar Travel Group is the leading business information and marketing solutions provider to the $300 billion U.S. travel, tourism and meetings industries. Through award-winning media brands, proprietary content, research and customized marketing solutions, Northstar offers unparalleled depth of information and services to clients in every vertical segment of the travel industry.

Location: Secaucus, New Jersey Founded: 1989 Employees: 550+ Industry: Travel & Hospitality Media

Northstar Travel Media is the leading business information and marketing solutions provider to the $300 billion U.S. travel, tourism and meetings industries. Through award-winning media brands, proprietary content, research and customized marketing solutions, Northstar offers unparalleled depth of information and services to clients in every vertical segment of the travel industry.

Challenge

Solution

Northstar Travel Group Challenge

Angela Cox, Northstar’s group director, meetings & events, organizes the company’s many events with her team. They also plan strategic networking sessions between meeting planners and meeting industry vendors. With registrations from both flooding in for each event, they have to successfully match up the two different types of attendees based on their region, specialties, and several other categories. Facilitating networking is vitally important for Northstar because they want their clients to find exactly what they are looking for at their conferences.

“The majority of our events are appointment based and we use a mutual matching system, Aventri’s network module, rather than an accept-and-deny basis. The driving factor that made our events simpler was the fact that with Aventri, we don’t have to re-key data. We saved about 5 hours per event.”

Northstar Travel Group Solution

Aventri has given Northstar Travel Group a new way of doing business. “We chose Aventri because of the capabilities of its network module,” said Cox. Privately and securely, the network module automates the process of connecting vendors and attendees of similar interests at host-buyer events and other meetings. Northstar can customize the matchmaking system for each event by selecting criteria for attendees and vendors and then choose the fields that they want the registrants to view. Vendors can then weigh the selected attendees based upon who they are most interested in meeting. Not only is this a big time-saver, but it optimizes appointments. Additional summary reporting provides valuable insights into attendees’ behavior and helps Northstar improve upcoming events.

Angela Cox Group Director, Meetings & Events