Hubli Focuses on Growth, Enabling Changing Demands

Hubli Founder & CEO Ciaran Delaney Talks...

 

• Hubli’s BTN Sustainability Awards win
• Internal meetings fueling simple meetings as a market segment
• Decentralized meetings booking
• Hubli’s growth

 

Hubli is connecting the dots on how big picture issues are impacting meetings. On the heels of the company’s recent Business Travel Sustainability Awards America win for sustainability in meetings and events, CEO Ciaran Delaney sat down with BTN’s Angelique Platas to discuss that, and how the macro-environment around the workplace, and the function of meetings within it, have precipitated industry shifts and defined the trajectory of the company’s innovation and growth. Edited excerpts following.

BTN: Congratulations on Hubli’s achievement in sustainability for meetings and events during the Business Travel Sustainability Awards America. What makes Hubli a standout in the space for sustainability?

Ciaran Delaney: We created a module called Hubli Green to help organizations start tackling sustainability in relation to meetings. Hubli Green has three components to it. The first one is a solution called Where to Meet. The booker uses a calculator to input where people are traveling from, how many people and how they're going to travel—it could be a meeting where there's five different locations of attendees. They input that information and the platform gives them results of the lowest carbon destination for their meeting based on those inputs, but also showing them the average cost in each destination. So it’s sustainable and there's a cost-effective piece as well. 

The next step is finding a venue that is the most sustainable. Within our platform, we have over 200,000 spaces globally [and] we've allowed [venues] the capability to upload their sustainability accreditation. We're also working with the accreditation bodies themselves. A hotel can [upload] the accreditation, that's vetted by our team and then they get a leaf symbol and a description of the accreditation. 

The third component is helping the organization reduce waste around the meeting. So when they're in the booking platform, they can choose to remove single-use plastics, coffee cups, etc. from the meeting itself and communicate that to the venue. 

BTN: Hubli launched Office Connect, precipitated by another change in the macro-environment around the workplace. How is that going?

Delaney: Office Connect is more [focused on] how business travel has been affected by the distributed workforce. [Customers] can include their companies’ office locations [in the Hubli platform as a meeting venue], as opposed to sourcing only external venues. There's been a significant growth in demand for team meetings—I think GBTA in their forecast for 2023 highlighted 20 percent of business travel trips [would be] for internal meetings. Office Connect [was our way] to facilitate that. But it does have sustainability overlap because the Where to Meet piece showcases venue options that are the most sustainable—and that could be the office.

BTN: According to American Express Global Business Travel, internal meetings continue to see exponential growth despite return to office trends. Are you seeing that reflected in Hubli’s platform?

Delaney: There's been such growth in internal meetings and team meetings. With Office Connect, we’re seeing significant demand [with] some clients adding hundreds of offices to the platform. The whole evolution of the office is massive for meetings and business travel. Offices are changing from being at the cubicle every day to being [driven by] experience and location. That’s becoming a big factor [in] business travel and how business travel is impacting culture and organizations. Meetings are [also] becoming a key driver for culture in organizations and productivity, and that's going to continue to evolve. 

BTN: Has the self-serve booking environment evolved and what’s driving that evolution?

Delaney: Simple meetings has become its own segment in the market. There's been a shift towards using self-serve technology and digitalizing that activity, which is a pretty new concept. We're launching with companies [where] hundreds of thousands of employees are accessing the platform to book—that's very different. The status quo was more around having a centralized planner booking meetings. There has been so much activity outside of that [since the pandemic]. 

BTN: What does that kind of shift away from centralized meeting planners mean for meeting policy or compliance? 

Delaney: Global companies going to market for self-serve simple meetings booking system is very new and happening increasingly. Companies want to bring control and governance into that area … [they want] one global platform that’s easy to use and has policy controls that organizations need. Some of the biggest drivers are just getting visibility on the bookings themselves and efficiencies around them.

Every week we're [hearing issues from prospective clients] where someone has booked some term that’s not part of their master services agreement. It's a hassle that goes back to governance [and] that's a big demand in our platform. We embed the organization’s terms and conditions, like their master service agreement or their statement of work [documentation] depending on how they frame it, into the booking process. 

BTN: From your bird’s-eye view—given the big picture trends and the tech advancements—what’s the biggest opportunity for travel and meetings managers in capturing the new simple meetings segment?

Delaney: There's a lot of opportunity around diversity and we're starting to see things change. Having an ability to report on your meetings, expenditure and savings, but also report on what you save from a CO2 perspective and how you facilitated your DE&I objectives—That's a huge opportunity for travel managers. 

BTN: What is Hubli concentrating on right now? 

Delaney: We're seeing massive growth in our company. We're doubling the team size this year. We've seen over 300 percent growth in booking volumes through the platform. We're setting up the U.S. office now and a Dublin office. So we're just seeing the general demand for our area has really scaled. We're seeing very strong technology, very strong product, 100 percent retention of clients. Right now, it’s all about expansion.