Name: THE AI SOURCING SHIFT: HOW TO STAY AHEAD
Uploaded: 2026-09-24T16:30:18.158Z
Duration: 55 min 43 s
Description: THE AI SOURCING SHIFT: HOW TO STAY AHEAD

Transcript for "THE AI SOURCING SHIFT: HOW TO STAY AHEAD": Hello, everyone, and welcome to the AI Sourcing Shift, how to stay ahead. We have an exciting agenda for you today to get you ready for the ever changing sourcing landscape. So a few housekeeping items really quick. We're all in gold Goldcast Events right now. It's my first time, so I'm excited. I hope you are too. This is one of our, Cvent webinar platforms. You can join the chat on the right side of your screen, submit questions in the q and a, and download the slide deck. And then I want you all to get, accustomed to the chat right now, so go ahead and tell us your name and where you're tuning in from. And we have, planners. We have suppliers. We have vendors. We have the whole event ecosystem on our webinar today, so really excited to see you all joining. Awesome. Alright. With that, I'm gonna introduce myself. My name is Kelli Kopec, and I'm a director of product marketing here at Cvent. And I look after products like our venue sourcing solution that connect event organizers with suppliers, and we have some really great AI enhancements that we're gonna talk through today. So I'm excited to get started. Our industry's landscape, it's shifting fast. I don't know if you all noticed. And with the innovations and constant change that AI is bringing, this is a new game. What made you successful in the past isn't what makes you successful in the future. AI is a disruptor, and it's an opportunity. The winners will lean into change, be curious, and try new things and learn. We see event planners changing the way they search and make decisions, and hospitality professionals are rethinking how to best connect and collaborate with planners. Some of you might be early adopters, and we wanna work together with you to pioneer what the next chapter looks like. Others might want to move a little more cautiously and deliberately. Either way, we we will help you manage this change in the way that works best for your organization. When teams are working through change, your effectiveness and performance improves over time. We know that AI is here to stay, so we are past this forming stage that we see on the left. We're in the storming phase right now. We're experimenting, testing, and learning. Some things are working and some things aren't. But in the not too distant future, we're going to be in the norming phase, and this will be the new normal way of working. It's going to make us better, and, ultimately, we'll be that high performing team because we're reaping all the rewards of the power that AI brings. Okay. That's my little introduction, and now I'm gonna take you through what we're doing today because big change is happening, and we're all seeing it in the industry. And I'm going to be joined by a team of experts to show you what that means and the investments that we're making to reimagine sourcing. So first, we're gonna share the state of the market. I'm gonna take you through the insights on the changing planner behavior and state of the market. And then Sam's gonna come on and take you through AI's impact on search and the shift from SEO to to GEO. And then finally, Ashley will join us, and she's gonna show us our new AI powered product experiences for event organizers and hospitality professionals. With that, let's get into the state of the market, and I'm gonna open up with a poll for you all. And I'm wondering from both sides of the ecosystem, where is AI having the biggest impact on sourcing today? So that could be venue discovery, RFP creation, proposal comparison, or venue responses and content. So I'm gonna give you all a minute or two to answer. Alright. Let's see the results. I'm gonna take the poll and see if I see the results that way. Okay. Alright. Well, let's continue on, and then hopefully, we can see the results a little bit later. My guess is the top choice was venue discovery. It seems like it might be a tech issue on my side. Hopefully, you guys saw it. The the responses, I could not see them on my side, but hopefully, you guys saw it. Benny discovery is probably number one. We're seeing a lot of event organizers, of got going to LLMs or other AI tools to help them with that, but we're seeing RFP creation also come to the forefront as well. And I'm gonna take you through some of our, some of our data that we've gotten from our plan and sourcing report too so we could validate that. So I wanna set the scene for a moment because I think it's important that we're grounded in some of that data. Venue sourcing, it's changed. The tools planners use the speed at which they can shortlist, the way they they evaluate fit, it's all different now. AI is at the center of that shift, and we're all going to talk through exactly what that means, whether you're the one sending the RFP or the one receiving it. So let's get into some of that data. This is from our 2026 planner sourcing report. It's important to note that when we talk about AI, it's really not a future state conversation. Right? We're seeing that three quarters of planners say they already use AI in sourcing. And when you look at where they're using it, it maps almost exactly to the poll that we started with. Then you search and selection tops the list at 43%. Attendee data analysis for better venue fit comes in at 41%, and bid comparison is right behind at 40%. The work that planners spend most of their time on, it's all AI enabled right now, and we're seeing that, when we ask planners how they're using AI. We're also seeing that 60% of planners are actively planning to increase their AI for sourcing, many moving from occasional use to a more meaningful part of the process. And 47% already say that technology is reducing their sourcing time. So the question for everyone tuning in today is it's not if AI is reshaping sourcing. We know that that's happening. It's whether your workflow and your content, it's ready for that shift. What AI is doing is compressing what used to be a multistep labor intensive process into something much more connected and much more efficient. Planners are using AI to create RFPs, compare bids, and analyze attendee data. It's influencing multiple touch points, not just discovery, and that changes the shape of the entire sourcing journey. What used to be a series of manual steps is becoming one connected decision flow. And that's great for planners. They're getting speed and getting sharper insights earlier in the process. In fact, we see that, again, through our 2026 planner sourcing report that 42% of planners say technology gives them better data and analytics for sourcing decisions. And 34% of planners say it has streamlined the RFP process. And there's an implication here that matters for suppliers too. Planner speed means your response time and your content quality, they're under a different kind of pressure than they used to be. We have corporate planners. They're running complex, high volume programs, and they need more automation, consistency, and speed across their teams. AI helps bring that structure to planning processes and reduce the manual work that slows execution. And we also have third party agencies. They support a wide range of clients and event types, but they often focus where volume is highest. AI helps them work more efficiently, expand their book of business, take on more events, and grow into categories they previously could not support at scale. And then finally, we have occasional planners. They're juggling multiple responsibilities, and this they may not know always know where to start with their process. Right? AI helps them move faster with intuitive tools, clearer guidance, and more confidence. And here's something equally important. When we talk about sourcing, we're not just talking about those large tier one events that are at big name hotels. The opportunity, it's much larger than that. It's the small meetings, the unique retreats, intimate dinners. And the suppliers that we're looking at, again, not just the big name hotels, their restaurants, galleries, experiential venues, rooftops, stadiums, the list goes on. Cvent's vision is sourcing that works for the total event program, all of this, not just the large events, not just the traditional suppliers. Every single planner, every single event, every supplier. So before I share the next data point, I want to hear again from you, and this one's for the event organizers that are tuning in specifically. I'm gonna make my screen really big so I don't miss this one as well. So what is driving your venue decisions right now? If you go to the polls tab, is it budget cost control, attendee experience, speed and availability, or unique or nontraditional venues and experiences. So I'm gonna give you all a minute to take the poll, and hopefully, I can see the results this time. I have it on my big screen. Let's see the results. And I still don't see them. Sorry, guys. Alright. Well, my guess is you all picked budget or cost control and attendee experience. And the reason why I asked this one is because we've done some research lately to find out who planners or what planners are looking at in terms of their success metrics. In the past, it used to be all about ROI. Right? How much we're spending, how much we're getting back. But interest interestingly, we've seen this year a shift that 63% of planners site attendee engagement as their primary success metric. They're not starting by asking, how do we save money here? Right? How do we get money here? They're asking, how do we make this event memorable? And that's reflected in where they're sourcing. 48% of planners are now sourcing special event venues, places like those restaurants, art galleries, rooftops, cultural spaces, and that's up more than 30% in the last three years. Planners want spaces that deliver and experience, not just capacity. This changes the sourcing dynamic entirely. It's no longer just find me a hotel with meeting rooms. It's find me the venue that will make this event unforgettable. And this is where AI becomes a true matchmaker, surfacing the right venue for the right planner based on what they're actually looking for, not just what fits a filter. The goal is to make to make a planner, match exactly what they're looking for and then surface what a supplier can bring to the table. AI is taking on more of the heavy lifting so that planners and suppliers alike can focus on the higher value parts of the work. Planners still bring judgment and discernment. AI can replace the insight that comes from walking a venue, understanding the client's culture, or navigating a tricky negotiation. Suppliers still bring hospitality nuance and the human experience of being on property. What AI does best is help both sides get to the right match faster. It can speed up the process, but human expertise is still what turns a good option into the right fit. And for suppliers, AI can improve speed and strengthen content, but your insight is what makes a proposal feel credible and trustworthy. The real opportunity isn't just adopting AI. It's designing sourcing experiences that combine intelligence with trust, and that's where the biggest wins are. And to close my section, I wanna focus on what AI driven sourcing means for content. In a keyword search world, being listed was enough. If the filters matched, you showed up. In an AI driven sourcing experience, visibility depends on more content, the content richness, and relevance. AI is surfacing and recommending venues based on how well your profile can be understood, not just whether you appear. Venues with rich, accurate detail profiles are more likely to be surfaced and recommended. Thin profiles lose out, not because of human, human judgment call, but because AI simply doesn't have enough signal to make a confident match. So for suppliers, the bar has moved from being listed to being understandable. And this is great for everyone because better source data means better fit recommendations, fewer rounds of back and forth, and more qualified leads reaching suppliers. When the content is right, everyone wins. The right planner finds the right venue. The right supplier wins the right business. And that match between what a planner is looking for and what a supplier can bring to the table is exactly what AI powered sourcing is designed to make happen. And the foundation that makes it possible is content, and that's where Sam is going to take us next. Kicking it over to you, Sam. Thank you, Kelli. Everybody, great to be here today. And like Kelli mentioned, AI is here to handle a lot more of the heavy lifting so that planners and suppliers can focus on the higher value work. And I wanna pick that thread back up because there's a layer underneath that shift that's really easy to miss. The way buyers actually find you is changing, and it's changing really, really fast. And if your team isn't optimizing for how discovery works in 2026, then you're already falling behind. So for the next ten minutes or so, I'm gonna take you into my world. I work in search engine optimization or SEO. This means my job historically has been focused on driving traffic to websites from Google. However, over the last two years, my field has seen a seismic shift. So today, I'm gonna talk to you about what that shift is and why you really need to be paying attention. First, I'm gonna take you through a quick timeline because context really matters about how we got here. So in 2022, ChatGPT launches publicly. At the time, most of it treated us like a curiosity. So I'm seeing in the chat that there isn't audio. Am I am I audible? Okay. Seems like most people can hear me. I'm gonna keep going then. In 2022, yeah, ChatMVT launches, most of it's treated like a curiosity, a tool for, you know, writing emails or brainstorming ideas. But what it actually did was introduce a new behavior. People start asking questions and getting direct answers without even surfing the web like they used to. So then in 2024, Google responds and they launch AI overviews. You guys have all seen those in Google. These are those AI generated summaries that now sit at the very top of a search results page. Suddenly, the answer is in the search results. Google is no longer just pointing you to a destination. It's actually becoming the destination for answers. And then fast forward to 2026, Google has announced that its intelligent AI powered search bar has come in. Conversational, agentic search experience. You don't have to type keywords anymore. You can have a conversation. You can get a recommendation, and you can make a decision. And oftentimes, you can make that decision without ever even visiting a single website. So in the world of SEO, we're afraid to the shift as zero click search. The search happens, the discovery happens, but the click, the traffic, the visit to your website often doesn't. And the numbers are really telling here. 68% of all Google searches now end without a click. Let that sink in for a second. More than two thirds of people searching for something on Google today never leave that search results page to go to a website. They get an AI generated answer and move on. And on ChatCha BT, less than 1% of users are actually clicking a link from the output that the tool is giving you. So if you've been measuring your success by traffic and clicks like we've largely have in SEO for years, you're now looking at a metric that's slowly losing its meaning. And this is just the way that the search landscape is shifting. But now before you spiral, this is not a search is dead conversation at all. The exact opposite actually. Discovery through organic search isn't going anywhere. But the way we engage with search engines is fundamentally different in 2026 than it was just three years ago. So let's break it down. Google still processes 14,000,000,000 searches every single day. Layer on top of that, 2,500,000,000 chat GBT prompts run daily. Chat GBT is becoming a search engine in its own right, and so is Gemini, perplexity, Claude. The places where buyers are going to ask questions and get recommendations, they've multiplied, and they're all AI powered now. So with search still happening at this scale, it's critical and understand how do we win in these emerging search engines. But to optimize for these channels is not to optimize for clicks. We're no longer competing for clicks. We're competing for mentions, and that's the pivot. The game hasn't ended. It's just changed, and we have a new name for it. Generative engine optimization or GEO. So let's put these concepts side by side. There's SEO, search engine optimization. It's what I've been doing for years, what most of you are probably most familiar with. You optimize web pages to rank in Google. You target keywords. You track your position on blue link search results pages. You measure clicks and impressions. Then we have GEO, generative engine optimization, which is about optimizing to appear accurately, favorably, and often in AI generated answers. And the platform isn't a search results page. It's inside an AI response on JWT, Gemini, perplexity, or Google's own AI properties. And the input is no longer a short keyword. It's a full conversational question. The success metric isn't a click. It's whether your brand is visible in these answers and your content is cited to inform these answers. But this is not SEO two point o, and it's not really Google versus chat GPT either. This is a structural shift in how search and discovery works now. It's really critical to adjust your strategy for this new search landscape. So let's zoom in. So like I said, the the days of vying for clicks and impressions are over. There are two new currencies you really need to be carried about. The first is visibility. Are you being mentioned when someone asks an AI tool to recommend solutions for their problem? If AI is generating a shortlist and you're not on it, you don't exist in that moment. The second is citations. Is AI pulling from your content to build its answer? Are you controlling what AI says about you? Are you letting someone else do it? Citations drive the narrative and they help you gain visibility. If your content is cited frequently, you take a larger share of the conversation and grab more control. So let's take an example here. We have a prompt top right. Convention center was 70 plus meeting rooms Nashville. You can see there Music City Center is listed in the output for this prompt. That's a mention. That's visibility. However, it's being mentioned because its CSN profile is being cited. That's a citation. You need to focus on both in order to win in this space. But what do you actually do to gain visibility and to generate citations? I wanna leave you with three pillars to take back to your team after today. And the first is content. You heard about it already. Does your content account for every qualifier that a user might be specifying? If the user is asking a 25 word prompt, you really need 25 words worth of answers from your content. And this means detailed informations of the things that set you apart. If your content is thin, then AI won't have enough signal to confidently recommend you. The second here is readability. Can AI crawlers actually read your website? And this is a little more technical, but it it matters still. If your site is built in a way that blocks AI bots or if your if your content is buried in PDFs or behind login walls or in formats that AI can't parse, you're invisible. So make sure you're working with your technical teams to ensure AI crawlers are actually reaching your site. The third is consistency, and this is a big one. Is your messaging consistent outside of your website? AI is not just looking at your website. It's looking at your listings, your third party profiles, your reviews, your press. It looks across the web when building an answer. If your Cvent profile says one thing and your website says something different, that inconsistency can lead to inaccurate information surfacing an AI results. Consistency across every website where your brand appears gives you the best shot at being surfaced reliably and accurately. So when an AI agent, whether that's ChatGPT, Google's AI search, perplexity, or Cvent's own sourcing intelligence, when that agent is evaluating whether your property is the right match for a planner's event, it's not pulling from thin air. It's reading your venue overview and your about us section. It's parsing through your amenities list. It's looking at your meeting space descriptions. It's processing your images, your floor plans, your catering options, your accessibility features. It's asking, does this venue clearly communicate what it offers, and does that match what this planner needs? So say I look at another example from the Cvent supplier network. Amenities and services clearly laid out, pet friendly, business center, AV capabilities, all of it is visible, it's structured, and it's readable. It's not just for a human planner skimming a page, but for the AI making the shortlist before that planner ever opens the browser. And in the next example, we see meetings based structures, photos, floor plans, square footage, room configurations. This is not just a nice to have anymore. This is the raw material that AI is using to match your venue to a planner who needs a 5,000 square foot ballroom or a breakout room that seats 30 classroom style. And if that information isn't there, if it's incomplete, outdated, or buried in a PDF somewhere, you don't make that shortlist. It's that simple. In a zero click world, your content really is your first impression now. And that is exactly where the Cvent supplier becomes such a critical part of the equation because the infrastructure is already there. You don't have to figure out how to get your content in front of AI platforms from scratch. So Ashley is gonna walk you through exactly how CSN's AI capabilities are built to take this rich content and put it to work, servicing your property to the right planners at the right moments through the right channels. Thank you, guys. Over to you, Ashley. Thanks, Sam. Hey, everyone. I'm Ashley Phelps, and I lead our beta programs at Cvent. So today, I'm excited to share with you Cvent's vision for sourcing in an AI first world. So to set the scene, I wanted to start with where we're coming from. Now this is how venue sourcing has worked for a long time. You know what your event needs. You just have to figure out how to express that in drop down menus and number fields. So you set the filters, run the search, get a list. And if something important to you doesn't exist as a filter option, you work around it, you've got good at it, it works. But it wasn't designed for a world it was designed before well, let me start that over. It was designed for a world before AI. And as Kelli said, that world has changed, and it continues to change fast. So when we looked at how to bring AI into sourcing, we quickly realized that there wasn't one right answer. Planners are in different places. Some have been sourcing in Cvent for years and just want a little help from AI in the Cvent they already know and love, and others are looking for AI first tools. We wanted to meet planners wherever they are, so we're investing in two distinct AI experiences, a smarter AI assisted Cvent and brand new chat based AI sourcing tools. So let me show you what both of those look like and we'll start with a couple of our AI assisted tools. So finding the right venue has always depended on knowing how to work the filters in Cvent and there are many. So we've added an AI layer to the core Cvent search. So now instead of configuring filters manually, planners can just describe their requirements in plain language, and the AI translates that into Cvent filters and then applies them automatically. Next. Creating an RFP has always been one of the most time consuming parts of Sourcing. So we've made it a goal to help planners fill out an RFP form as quickly as possible to help them go from event details to complete RFP draft in just seconds. So to do this, we're launching RFP Builder. It's pretty simple. It's easy as uploading a document or pasting in text describing their event, and AI populates the RFP from there. So no more manual entry. The draft is ready to review and send. Now neither of those are brand new tools. We just took the sourcing workflows that planners already know and made them smarter with AI. But planners find the way planners find and evaluate venues is changing fast, and so are we. Kelly already told you. A recent survey said 75% of planners are now using AI in their sourcing process. So we've talked to a lot a lot of them. They tell us they're using Chatubit or Gemini or Claude to do some research, ask questions, and then they come back to Cvent to do the RFP. This is time consuming. Multiple taps, multiple disconnected tools, a lot of reentering the same information in different places. But we know planners wanna go to one place. So this led us to ask ourselves, how might we reimagine resourcing for an AI first world? What if a workflow that used to take days could be completed in a single conversation? So let's dive deeper into that vision. This is the new AI sourcing platform. Now let's say I'm sourcing a three day event for 200 people. I haven't picked a city yet, but I know I want it in the Southeast. I need good meeting space, a great food scene, somewhere with energy. So the platform starts with city recommendations, and it asks me questions to help narrow things down. I say I want the most popular city and that my attendees are event planners and suppliers with high expectations for fun. So sure enough, the AI recommends Nashville. Now once I click in, I see this isn't a Nashville brochure. It's referencing my attendees, my event type, the energy I asked for. This was written for me for my event. And then there's city vibes, rich imagery and videos to help me visualize and really feel the experience. And at any point, I can ask questions like, what kind of evening events would be fun and uniquely nash out? And just like that, I get several great ideas. So now I'm ready to check out some venues within the city. And there it is, not every venue in the city, but a short list of venue recommendations built for the event I just described. Now I flipped a map view because I wanna see which of these puts my attendees closest to the action downtown. So I click in to a few, Let's see. These will all work. So I have them to my list, and it suggests three more that also fit what I asked for. So I click into one of these, we'll go with Omni, and I get AI's view of it. So right up top, it tells me why it recommended this venue, connecting everything in this conversation to what this property has. And then it pulls my company's history with the property, so past RFPs, rates, and reviews from my colleagues who've hosted events here. And one new content section we're building is called real events. So now I really get a sense of what a real event looks like in this venue, proof of what the space can do. And it's so much more powerful than stock photos of an empty ballroom. And because everything is housed in one platform, I can go a step further by looking at the three d diagrams in this real event to see how the space and the rooms were actually set up. But I wanna customize this one for my needs. So I click and change it, swap the rounds for classroom, and I can even design the space using chat prompts, like, can you change the layout to two tables per row? And just like that, now the room fits my event, and I can also add this hotel to my list right here. So now I have 10 venues on my list, and it's RFP time. But this isn't the normal RFP workflow where I have to stop what I'm doing and fill out a form. The AI already built most of the RFP from our conversation. So all the context I've been sharing, it's been keeping. So I review it. I can easily make edits, and additions directly in the chat, like adding my meeting space requirements. And before I send it, it's recommending the Nashville CVB to help me manage activities outside the event, like transportation and dinners at nearby restaurants. Okay. RFP sent. I still haven't left the AI platform, and it's already suggesting next steps, like pulling in vendors for catering and unique venues through vendor marketplace. Okay. Let's pause real quick and recap. I've picked a destination, built my venue shortlist, and sent my RFP. So now I get my proposals and I need to pick a winner, but I don't wanna have to click in and out and look at every single proposal. So I go back to the AI sourcing platform, and my proposals are lined up side by side. There we go. And the assistant even compares the different options for me. So no extra clicking, no downloading, no spreadsheets. And the AI sourcing can also generate new forms of content for me, like taking this proposal comparison and putting it into a PowerPoint I can share with my stakeholders. Now once I've decided, I can say in the chat which venue to award. So the sourcing part is done, but my job isn't over. So the journey continues into room blocks. Now the AI knows that my event has sleeping rooms and that I have a passkey license, so it moves right into passkey, and it starts setting up my room block and attendee booking site. Okay. So what you just saw is a vision of where sourcing is headed. I went end to end with my sourcing, diagramming, and room blocks in one experience. So we're already in beta with many of these capabilities now, and we plan to bring more features and capabilities to the experience over time. Alright. Now I wanna speak to the suppliers that have joined us today because everything we've just covered matters for the suppliers too. So how do suppliers improve their chances that the destination or the venue appears in these new AI searches? Now Sam talked about this a little bit. He called it content is king. So here we go. The the the answer is content. AI needs lots of content. And our AI looks at the Cvent profile content first. And if it's not there, AI can pull from external sources. Sam talked about some of those. So, of course, it's the basics like your images, videos, venue descriptions, and floor plans, that's all content. But, additionally, your three d tours, your pass key integration, your planner reviews, and your past real events, all of its content. So the more complete and rich a Cvent venue profile is, the more the AI has to work with to match those planner searches with the right venues, which means more qualified RFPs. So now when the RFPs do come in, we wanna make sure suppliers are set up to respond effectively. Now our suppliers have to respond quickly when an RFP comes in and they need to make a strong case for their property and the quality of that response matters. So to help with this, we've built the response assistant. The response assistant helps suppliers write stronger proposals faster. It assists in drafting the response using details of the RFP and the property's profile content and even documents uploaded, enabling suppliers to respond to more RFPs with better quality proposals. It easily powers through time consuming tasks like assigning meeting rooms and answering custom questions. There's awesome. So we're excited to share that response assistant is available for all GPI and Cvent One customers. Alright. That's it for me. So I'm gonna hand it back over to Kelli to close this out. Amazing. Thank you, Ashley. And thank you, Sam, as well for your insights. And I know for all of you tuning in, we just shared a lot with you. So I wanted to quickly summarize some of the key takeaways from each of our sections. AI is changing planner behavior. Almost every planner is now using AI in some capacity when sourcing, venue discovery, RFP creation, bid comparison. And to enable this new AI powered sourcing experience, content, the quality of that content matters more than ever. Hotels, venues, and destinations must provide rich, accurate profile content to ensure they are surfaced to planners as qualified recommendations. Search behavior is shifting from SEO to GEO. Sam's entire job is GEO. So the new goal is moving from win the click to be visible and win the recommendation and citation. This also depends on having the best content because AI responds best with complete a complete set of content needed to match what the planners are looking for, meaning space capacities, policies, FAQs, and location context. And then finally, we are reimagining sourcing here at Cvent to be simpler and personalized. We will continue to improve our existing Cvent Supplier Network with new AI capabilities to make it easier and faster for you all to source. And we are building a brand new conversational user experience that brings together curated, personalized venue recommendations with an RFP that is automatically generated, and it's all in one place. And we'll also be including bid comparison, vendor recommendations, and passkey room block creation in the future. And we want you to know whether you're an early adopter or not, there are a lot of ways that you can engage. We intend to make it easy for you to try new things, experiment, and learn, and go make stuff happen with AI for you and your organization. So we're gonna be there to assist you and provide any insights that you need. And this is a little plug for Ashley's program, giving you some time to scan this QR code, and this will get you, availability to participate in our beta program. I don't think we mentioned it. The Cvent supplier network for event organizers, it's a free tool. You can create a free account today. And with that free account, you can participate in this beta program. We can turn on that then, that, AI sourcing engine that Ashley went over for you, and you can start sourcing for free today. So if you sign up for the beta program, we'll get your information and reach out. Perfect. And with that, before well, first, we have some time for you to put, questions in the q and a, so I wanna make sure you're doing that. We have about fifteen minutes left in the presentation. So if there are questions, please put them in q and a. And then, also, if you're interested in learning more about our solutions, whether venue sourcing solutions or any of our event organizer or hospitality solutions, please sign up to complete a demo with us. You can click the button you see on the top right of your screen or that running ticker that you're seeing at the bottom of your screen. Awesome. Thank you for that. And then, hopefully, we can share one final poll, and we're interested in understanding what your next step is after this presentation today. Are you going to take these insights and share them with your team? Are you going to start using AI a little bit more to shortlist or help you with your venue sourcing process? If you're a supplier, are you gonna update your profile content, wherever that may be across, all of your platforms to make sure you're being surfaced? Or are you gonna Explore Us even can help and you wanna connect with our team immediately. Please take that poll. Amazing. And with that, I am going to get into the q and a right now. It looks like we have a question from Diana Bauer who wants to know if they can receive the recording of the webinar and the presentation of all speakers. And we do have the presentation right now in the docs, area. It is a PDF. You're not going to get all of the videos and everything that, especially, Ashley shared. So if you want, we can follow-up with the full deck with those videos if you're interested in in seeing that. But, yes, we will share the recording out, after this as well. I see that, we I think I had some poll issues. I'm not quite sure everyone had poll issues. But Melissa McGowan said based on the first poll, people noted that AI is helping with proposal comparison. We I I maybe Ashley is the best to talk about what we have in the product for proposal comparison and and how AI is helping with that. That I would that's for planners. Right? The proposal. comparison. that we're. talking about? Yes. Oh, yeah. Okay. So that is part of the AI sourcing platform. But as I mentioned at one of my last slides that not all of that's available today, some of that was a vision. So the proposal comparison part is not yet available, in beta, but we, you know, we assume those will be coming out over the next coming quarters. I don't like to make promises on on, on dates, but we're working on all that. Great. And then moving on to the next one, Belinda asked if there is a cost for response assistant. I believe you touched on that too, Ashley, in your slide that it's a part of the GPI bundle. Mhmm. GPI or c v one bundle. Yeah. For suppliers. So, yes, there is a cost for suppliers for the response assistant. Let us know if you're interested. We can do a demo. Great. Let's go to the next one. As a venue, is there a way to see on Cvent how we are appearing? Well, okay. go ahead. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. you you have take it? I was just gonna say you could you could always see what your profile looks like, right, to event organizers by going to what that looks like. But when it comes to what AI is surfacing, it's a little bit different. So I'll let Ashley you could you could probably touch on that. Yeah. So as I mentioned, we have two, you know, AI, the AI assisted and then the AI native AI need native chat based tools. So the first one I covered, that's our core CSN, but it takes what people put in their natural language and applies filters to it. That is available if you just go to our standard CSN sourcing. You can try that out, and it depends on all those different things. So it depends on how people are searching and what kinds of natural language they're using. But how you know, things that you would think that your profile should come up with, you can go ahead and try that out. Our AI sourcing platform, the one I did several videos, the full demo for, that is in beta. It is and and we can opt you in. So if you go to cvent.com/betaprograms, there's an s on the end, you can sign up for that, and we can give you access, and you can go and play around and and see how what's coming up on the shortlist based off of different searches. And I I would recommend if you're a venue or a hotel or a supplier, like, playing around with any AI agents or LLMs, by searching specifics to your property to see if you will appear because I think that will give you a good idea to know if your content is is equipped for the different AI searches. Obviously, Sam Brown shared a lot of best practices. So, I mean, if you wanna comment, Sam Brown, on some of the things you should be looking for, and and, you know, if you are doing those queries to see if you're showing up. Yeah. I mean, I would I would try to mirror, you know, if if you've had SEO, you know, work before mirroring some of the some of the terminology that you're just aware that people would find you in Google and kind of translating that back over to chat gbt to get a baseline view of visibility. If, you know, you want a deeper view into performance for some of those some of those metrics I cited earlier like visibility and citations, there are now tools for that geo Martech tools to understand based on how you're performing from a visibility perspective and a citation perspective. But if you're in the early stages of kind of understanding performance, I would do exactly what Kelli did. Just go in prompt a little bit, you know. You guys know what's bet what is most relevant, you know, prompting and searching and just kinda mirror what how you know you've been found before in Google search and just see how that's functioning now in, in some of those AI tools like ChatGPT and and Claude and Gemini. I wanna add on to that too because I think, we didn't have a slide today that showed some examples of of planner queries in our AI tools, but we're seeing a lot more, like, abstract criteria that people are putting in their searches. So, things like, you know, campy vibes or interesting outdoor experiences. So those kinds of things aren't things you would normally have in your, like, venue profile description, but you may think of your venue that way. So, again, the more content and the more types of images you can have on there that show those types of vibes. So, yeah, think of, like, how people describe vibes or how they describe their event other than, you know, size of the ballroom or, number of meeting rooms that they need. So. when you're playing around, think, yeah, when you're playing around, think of things like that. Yeah. And I'll just add on to that, a data point I saw the other day from Forrester. In in traditional search in Google, keywords typically averaged three to four words, and now prompts in AI averaging around 23 words. So exactly what Kelli just mentioned, a lot more descriptors, a lot more kind of vibe oriented, querying being done, and that's where the importance of content comes in, honestly. Making sure that you're able through your content to answer a lot of the specific questions that somebody may be prompting since the length of those queries have gotten so much longer as we transition from a traditional search world to an agentic one. That actually, made me think about a stat that we're tracking, and I I probably shouldn't share this, yet because it it's, not based off of a huge sample set. But what we're seeing at Cvent is that those organizers who are using our our AI, venue sourcing tool, AI powered one, they're they're getting better recommendations, and they're actually sending their RFP to less venues than what we've seen through traditional search. I don't have the exact numbers, but it's almost cut in half. So for the supplier side, that's that's good to know because you're getting you have less competition when you're getting an RFP. Right? Instead of it being sent to 10 venues, you're one of five competing for the business. So that's something very interesting that we're seeing with our AI sourcing tool and something we'll continue to track. Alright. I'll go to the next one. When will we have access to the AI builder? I think this is probably referring to the AI RFP builder is not is my guess, which. Yeah. is in beta. Right? Yeah. It's in closed beta, so same thing. One more plug.cvin.com/life beta programs. You can sign up for that. We are, going to start releasing that more broadly over the coming months. It's been in closed beta for a while. We've made a lot of updates based off of customer feedback. And then sort of, like, the next version of that that is also just started beta is email to RFP. So you can think, like, when you're getting descriptions of events or event requirements in an email that you just wanna get at least get started on a RFP. You just forward it to a specific email address we give you, and it starts generating that RFP right away. Then you can go into our actual RFP tool, and you can use the RP builder to edit it or make manual, edits and additions. So both of those are, you can sign up to get access. Amazing. Going to the next question, why should I use Cvent tool over other AI agents? Ashley Phelps, I'll I'll kick this one to you. that me again? Yeah. Yeah. We touched on it a little bit, but it's like, we know planners and and if it this is coming from a planner, like, don't wanna go to multiple tools and tabs. Like, it's not amazing to be in we'll just use Claude. That's one of my favorites. You know? Be doing that and then, like, copy, pasting a whole bunch of stuff to the r you know, going back to Cvent, putting out the RFP when it's all one platform. You're doing it all in one place. The AI especially the AI sourcing platform is doing it all for you with just a few more prompts. And as we showed on those, venue profiles, you can see, like, the your history with that property. So if you have had planners, have venue on your team in your within your Cvent account, have events there before, you can see their reviews, you can see, you know, past RP rates and and things like that, which, again, it's all in one place. You only get that when you're using Cvent AI. Mhmm. And and Cvent's data I mean, venues have been on Cvent for decades, so our our data story is really top notch. And and a lot of times, we have, you know, more specifics than any other, you know, brand website or any any type of platform out there. So it it's really, the best place for centralized event specific data. Alright. This is the last question I see. So if you have any more, get them in. We'll stay on. Which specific profile fields or content types have the biggest impact on whether an AI recommends us? Photos, floors, floor plans, written descriptions, reviews. I'm gonna. give this one to Sam. You know, it sounds a bit like a non answer, but they're they're they're all really helpful. I mean, there there's no potential negative reason to to not include any of these. I would say photos, floor plans, and written descriptions are table stakes at this point. You need to fill those in and make sure those are included. I'll spend a second longer on reviews because reviews sort of been represent an interesting element of of the shift that we're seeing in search. And that's how these tools like ChatGPT and and others want to become that layer of evaluation that maybe used to be a review site review site for somebody. Chatchemia is doing a lot of that evaluation for you, and reviews are so helpful in that. It's able to, you know, parse through, you know, thousands of reviews and kinda distill them down to a single answer. So when we think about this transition from, you know, an SEO world to a geo world, reviews which didn't play a hugely significant role in SEO are playing a much more significant role in geo. Because not only is Chatcha BTU going to give you a list of venues, it's gonna tell you what people think about those venues, and that's largely coming from reviews. People who have followed this closely might be aware of how significant user generated content became last year when when it was starting to become understood where Chattopty b t liked to go for its for its citations and and Reddit and g two and some of those larger view sites were such a huge, citation pool for them. And that's because it was able to parse through these thousands and thousands of pages and distill them down to kinda single, evaluative measures about, you know, software and and properties and and things like that. As far as content types go, I'll quickly just mention, FAQ sections. The reason because these AI crawlers that are are going to sites are far less evolved than than Google crawlers that have been around for a very long time. And FAQ sections really mirror how people engage with those platforms, and they're they're easy to crawl and they're easy to understand. So if you're able to apply FAQ style content, that can be really, really impactful, especially when it's just coming to answering, you know, specific questions that, you know, people have about your your venue or your property. I would definitely recommend applying FAQs, as much as you can as well as the other profile fields like photos and floor plans and about us is and, reviews as well. They're they're all significant, but for for a variety of different reasons. So, you know, too long didn't read. All of it's important, but there's the why to I wanna add to that. just to give, like, a specific example. So, you know, we've been talking about natural language and, the reviews part, whether they're in on other websites or reviews in Cvent. That's where people are using their own natural language, which can then match with what people what planners are putting in their AI searches. So here's one example. If someone is leaving your view talking about their global sales summit, like I or, you know, the event type they had or, like I said, all the abstract criteria, like, certain vibes, you wouldn't just you wouldn't put that stuff in your venue description, but that's how people are leaving reviews. And so then when the next person is is searching for something like that, the AI can pick up on that because it is more natural language and probably the same for FAQs. It's just written more written naturally. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Great. I think that's our last question, and we're about at time. So thank you all for the engagement today. I hope you got something out of this no matter where you sit in the event ecosystem. Appreciate it, and thank you all for tuning in, and thanks to our speakers as well. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Bye, guys.