Specialized distribution specialists Entertainment Benefits Group has announced a merger with local New York competitor Plum Benefits.
Entertainment Benefits is not often in the news; it primarily offers a centralized resource for American employees to purchase entertainment, activities and hotels as a perk of employment.
The Entertainment Benefits "TicketsAtWork" platform allows employers to offer a smorgasbord of travel activities at discounted rates to employees, creating an enormous closed-loop network of potential customers that numbers in the tens of millions - over 40 million, according to the company itself.
The company works directly with suppliers, such as Walt Disney and Cirque de Soleil, to access inventory and distribute through the proprietary distribution channels.
EBG also white labels its distribution platform to partners, such as Travelocity, where its own products and admin system distribute the inventory - in this case, underpinning the activities portion of Travelocity in Las Vegas.
This technology also supports the concierges of Vegas resorts like the Venetian and Caesars. For the concierges, all of the available tours and activities come through the Entertainment Benefits back-end system.
Beyond the corporate-facing product, the New York-based company also runs consumer websites, such as NewYork.com and the Best Of Orlando. These websites offer tickets to shows and activities, in addition to hotels, all available for public booking.
EBG declined to disclose revenue numbers for both pre- and post-merger, but says that the merger will increase distribution and inventory while also adding more employees to its network. The combined company should total just over 4 million admissions annually.
Tnooz spoke with Stephanie Baker, EBG's Senior Vice President of Marketing, about the merger and its related implications.
Entertainment Benefits isn't the most visible company in travel. What do you do?
I like to say we are an OTA for attractions, tours and entertainment. Our company focuses on distribution for entertainment and travel. On the travel side, that's really around activities, tours and attractions. We also distribute hotels throughout all of our platforms.
We're retail, we're consumer-facing, corporate and B2b and distribution/white label.
On our corporate side, that's how our company was founded in 2001. It's a program called TicketsAtWork, and its a closed-loop employee-sanctioned marketplace for the employees of companies. We have over 11,000 corporate clients who use TicketsAtWork to get access to special offers and deals on top attractions, shows, events and hotels. it's a nationwide program, and we work with about 40 million employees around the country.
You're merging with a competitor. What advantages does this bring the newly combined business?
Were merging with Plum Benefits, who has a similar model, but they are primarily based in New York with 20,000 NYC-based clients. Some in Philly and DC, but mostly in NYC.
Their current platform is that they link-off, more like an affiliate relationship, and we're merging with them and now their program will be called "Plum Benefits powered by TicketsAtWork" and will become transactional.
Our total reach will be 30,000 corporate clients and 50 million employees. We think this is important to share, because we are doing something similar to Peek and Viator, but the volume and reach is probably twice as much as either of those companies.
Our relationship with the suppliers is more strategic, in the sense that its about volume. We have some great rates that we are able to pass on to our member base, because we have our 4 distribution outlets to support our supplier partners - whether through the public, retail or closed-loop channel.
From an inventory standpoint of shows, we do manage much of the inventory that we sell. We don't manage it all since they have a primary sales channel, but we build it into our system and automate the inventory on our end as far as numbers.
We have our own admin system and technology that allows people to book different price points and dates, but we build it and manage it ourselves. From a supplier perspective, its turn key and easy. We become part of their strategic sales mix.
How will the new company be structured?
We're very excited because we are acquiring the Plum Benefits sales and service team, and they will become our employees on April 1 when the merger is official.
What we get from them is the management of the companies - all of the corporate clients and the team that manages those corporate clients and the team that acquires new corporate clients. We have our own product teams here that manage the new products, and we will work with Plum's product team in the New York market.
We have a growth plan for our corporate program to double our corporate client platform within 3 year - that means to go from 10,00 clients to 20,000 clients in 3 years time. And we've done that already. But we still hope to grow our national corporate base, so another 10,000 corporate clients across the country.
In terms of suppliers we feel that we work right now with most of the top suppliers across the country, but we'd like to go more local. We'd like to increase the number of markets that we are in. We're currently in 25-30 states, and so it's really about working with suppliers in all of the markets that we have corporate clients in to make sure that we have activities and local offers in addition to destinations.
We'd like to have more overseas, such as in Europe, so our US employees will have products for when they want to travel - such as Mexico and Hawaii. Our next phase will be into Canada and Europe, and then further afield. We currently have 80,000 hotels that you can book internationally, but the activities product is not international yet - so the expansion on the international supply side will be the next opportunity for us.
Any plans to expand the employee program overseas?
We haven't done much research into how our program would work for overseas companies, as they work much differently than companies here in the US.
Travel is also different for Europeans than Americans. We haven't done any research into how our benefit would work overseas, but it's more about how we can bring more international supply to our closed loop customer base of avid travelers.
NB: Ticket image courtesy Shutterstock.