StarCite adds online event registration to Small Meetings Solution

Meetings management technology firm StarCite today announced the immediate availability of an online event registration capability for its Small Meetings Solution meeting-booking portal, allowing users to e-mail invitations, create a registration site and manage a database of attendees.

The Small Meetings Solution currently is "primarily used for sourcing and booking meeting space and meeting rooms for small meetings," said Kevin Young, vice president of marketing for StarCite. "We want to make our Small Meetings Solution very complete and very turnkey, so it's got all the components that a user needs to conduct a small meeting. The piece we were missing was the one around attendee management."

Users can choose preformatted invitation templates to e-mail to attendees, and also can create a registration site from a template. When attendees click on the link in the e-mail, they are taken to the registration site, where they enter their personal information, such as name, e-mail address and company. The information is displayed in reports in the Small Meetings Solution and can be exported to Excel. Reports also include rooming lists, which show which attendees need a room, and when attendees will check in and out.

However, customers can "decide whether they want this functionality available or not," Young said.

Having attendee management tools is "part of a unified strategic meetings management initiative," said Corbin Ball, president of Bellingham, Wash.-based meetings technology consulting firm Corbin Ball Associates. "In their meetings consolidation initiatives, the ability to have an attendee management solution for small meetings would be a benefit. So many of those meetings are small, simple ones."