PHILADELPHIA -- Following months of speculation and promotion,
StarCite.com, a new Web site for meeting planners, will go live on
Nov. 30.
StarCite.com, based here, calls itself an electronic meetings
marketplace and will enable planners to research, book and manage
meetings on line, according to John Pino, chairman and chief
executive officer of StarCite.com.
Pino said the site, which was designed with input from meeting
planners, hotel executives and suppliers, will offer a fast,
easy-to-use, total solution to meeting planning and purchasing that
benefits planners in the $100 billion meeting planning
industry.
"StarCite.com is a Web-based marketplace for buying and selling
products that will change the way meetings are booked and managed,"
Pino said.
"We're changing the way meetings happen, and [planners] who use
StarCite.com are riding the wave of the future and positioning
themselves for greater success."
The site will allow planners to search a database of 50,000
industry suppliers and send electronic requests for proposals
(RFPs).
StarCite also will facilitate Web-based registration and
attendee management; arrange on-line auctions, and allow planners
to broker to other groups contracted meeting space they cannot use.
StarCite will receive a transaction fee for each piece of business
booked through the site, Pino said.
All suppliers get a free listing in the StarCite.com database,
where meeting planners will have access to them. Supplier
categories include hotels, resorts, other meeting facilities,
transportation companies, destinations and recreational companies,
Pino said.
When it goes live on Nov. 30, StarCite.com will join two other
meeting planning sites: EventSource.comand Plansoft.com. But a
major point of differentiation for StarCite, according to Pino, is
its plan to create free and customized purchasing sites for
companies that plan multiple meetings each year.
On these personalized sites, companies can maintain lists of
preferred vendors and specify policies that employees need to
follow. In addition, at the site firms will be able to track
meeting spending across all departments, while individual planners
can review and replicate old RFPs, according to John Lavin,
president and chief operating officer of StarCite.com.
"Tracking total spending across large organizations with
multiple departments that plan meetings has always been a very
tedious task," Lavin said.
"Our customized sites allow a top financial officer of an
organization to ascertain quickly the total budget spent for a
particular meeting.
"And that becomes an important financial and benchmarking tool
for an organization."
Additionally, a corporate calendar feature provides one central
location for the organization to post and detail all upcoming
meetings and events. Planners also can opt to conduct an on-line
auction, using StarCite.com to streamline the negotiation process
of selecting locations, pricing and meeting components, Lavin
said.
"Our goal is to provide both buyers and suppliers an effective
means to transform a traditionally time-consuming selection process
into an efficient way of transacting business," Lavin said.
"The auctions will ensure that the overall value provided by the
suppliers best meets the needs of that particular meeting."
StarCite Inc. was spun-off in January 1999 as a separate company
from McGettigan Partners, whose CORE Discovery software
capabilities were used to create the StarCite.com on-line meetings
marketplace, Pino said.
StarCite.com
Phone: (215) 422-1235
Web: www.starcite.com