Allseated is a dream come true for special event venues, event planners, and their clients. The company’s flagship virtual tour solution, Allseated VISION, digitizes the process by giving venues a way to showcase their event spaces and book events without the need for onsite meetings. Event organizers take advantage of Allseated VISION technology to more quickly select an appropriate event space while also enabling event planners to more easily visualize the furnishing, decor, and other logistics in collaboration with vendors and client decision-makers.
The company uses a Matterport Pro2 camera to capture venues in 3D at 4k resolution. The resulting digital twin isn’t a diagram or a model. It’s an immersive, full-color, high-resolution replica of the actual space, and it includes spatial data and measurements.
The Matterport digital twin is only the foundation for Allseated’s solutions. The company uses the Matterport API and SDK to add its own functionality. Event professionals can drag and drop a wide range of tables, chairs, decorations, and tens of thousands of other objects, in a variety of shapes, sizes, and colors, from the Allseated library into the venue’s digital twin. Everyone can see exactly what the space will look like in the real world, and they can virtually tour it in advance on a laptop and mobile device.
Bringing Spaces to Life in 3D with Matterport
Founded in 2012, today Allseated has 85,000 planners and more than 40,000 event venues in its network, and it handles more than a thousand events every day.
Event planning firms subscribe to Allseated’s OPS service to collaboratively plan events and gain access to 100,000 floorplan templates, with over 1,500 venue floorplans, digital twins, and 10,000 3D objects in furniture libraries, along with other digital event planning tools. Instead of traveling to a venue, event professionals and prospective clients can design an event remotely through the Allseated system. The technology runs in a web browser and is cloud-based, so clients don’t have to download or install anything.
Caterers know exactly how to set up the buffet. The waiters can see who is sitting where and who has what dietary restrictions, and planners can walk between tables and find out if there’s enough room, something all planners struggle with. Wedding couples can visualize walking down the aisle and preview the seating and decorations.
“Event planners and their clients can remotely design and explore the venue while walking around and making changes in real-time. We provide an immersive experience all from the comfort of your couch,” says Sandy Hammer, CMO, and Co-founder, Allseated.
As a result, Allseated’s hospitality clients are realizing sales increases of 30 percent. They also see 60 percent boosts in operational efficiency by saving two and half hours in time for diagramming and managing day-of-event setup errors. A company that pays staff $20 per hour for setup on an event day can achieve savings of $45-50 per staffer, per event, resulting in savings of more than $6,000 annually. “We can capture the space and the furniture in real-time and have a usable plan within three or four days,” Hammer says. “Before Matterport, it took us weeks to produce a workable plan.”
The company’s clients attest to the value. “Allseated VISION has given us a way to virtually bring clients into our event space no matter where they are in the world. This powerful technology was easy to implement and has already proven to be an invaluable sales tool for our venue,” says Michael Stavros, Partner and Director of Business Development at M Culinary Concepts.
A Streamlined Planning Process
The Allseated object library is vast. It includes furniture collections that venues have in-house as well as multiple furniture partnerships with rental companies. Furniture and decor items are documented in detail using clickable Mattertags. Experienced planners can put together a plan in just minutes. The company streamlines the planning process for all those planning an event so that it’s not overwhelming.
“With the saved templates, clients can tweak it according to their specific wants and needs, but they won’t be starting with a blank screen and wondering where to begin or how to get the most out of the space,” Hammer says. “We’re able to move so much faster now that we can offer this service to the thousands of venues that contact us each year, without having a backlog or waiting list.”
Allseated floorplans for venues are more likely to work smoothly. A venue’s legacy floorplans are often outdated if architectural changes were made over time, especially if walls were added or removed. Because Matterport cameras capture spatial data and measurements in addition to imagery, Allseated can produce its own accurate floorplans from the digital twins.
“Before we created Allseated, many mistakes were made when planning events,” Hammer says. “Sometimes event professionals learned the hard way that it wasn’t possible to fit 400 people into a space or that the doors weren’t wide enough to move the rental furniture through. Now with our tools and Matterport together, we can see these sorts of things in advance.”
Enabling Online and Hybrid Live Events
Allseated’s next adventure is a new product called Allseated EXVO, a virtual platform for hybrid and online events that takes the Allseated platform to the next level. With EXVO, in-person events can be essentially broadcasted in 3D as virtual events for participants who can’t or don’t want to travel.
Event organizers can showcase live keynote speakers and highlighted presentations in rich, multimedia detail. Attendees navigate and interact with others around the digital twin-based event space as if they were there in person. Each attendee can use an avatar body with a video monitor-like head that shows the attendee through their webcam, via live video stream. This enables virtual attendees to become active participants that can have natural conversations and make connections with others, just like in the real world.
“In 2012, we were in black and white. In 2014 we were in 3D. In 2016, we started with Matterport and now offer digital twins for hyper-realistic immersive sales and marketing tools of venues,” Hammer says. “How cool is that?”
Allseated is a Matterport Platform Partner that leverages Matterport APIs and SDKs to build and commercialize their apps and integrations with Matterport’s market-leading spatial data platform. As a Platform Partner, they gain access to a range of commercial benefits, such as Matterport’s distribution network and enhanced support as well as co-marketing and co-selling programs to help them successfully monetize their applications. To learn more about the Platform Partner Program and apply to join, visit https://matterport.com/platform-partner-program
ABOUT ALLSEATED
Through a cutting-edge 3D visualization platform including floorplan design tools, venue virtual tours, and a revolutionary virtual/hybrid event solution, Allseated is transforming the event industry and leveraging innovation with superior customer service to help clients grow their businesses. It is the pure power of imagining together.
HEADQUARTERS
San Francisco, California
PRODUCTS
Matterport SDK, Matterport API, Matterport Pro2 3D Cameras
Results
- 30% sales increase for hospitality clients investing in digital twin-based virtual venue tours and space planning tools
- 60 percent greater efficiency for event planners
- Better end customer experiences and fewer planning mistakes due to more accurate dimensions and visual detail
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