Inefficiency is what drives businesses to create better products. Is there a way of doing the same thing more quickly? Or more cheaply? Or, most importantly, more easily?
These are the questions businesses have to constantly ask themselves to stay at the forefront of the market.
And the ultimate drivers behind these demands, the consumers, are the millennials. These are the same people who will take an Uber home from drinks late on a Saturday night, watch box sets on Netflix, order Zomato and book their next holiday on Airbnb. They are the biggest critics of products that don’t do what they say they should, or work in the most effective way possible. And technology is today’s medium for creating more efficient products. It is no longer any good to provide something that is clunky and involves too much scope for human error and interference.
We learnt long ago that computers can do things far more efficiently than we can. The possibilities for services and products we can produce seems infinite. In general, though, it is not about creating totally new products. It is about taking a system or product that is outdated and repurposing it for today’s consumers. Uber has taken the taxi service and put a modern mindset behind it. Airbnb has looked at the hotel industry and taken the concept of hotels to a new level.
At Spalba, it is this concept — the meeting of efficiency and technology — that has helped us to shape our product. We looked at the hospitality industry and saw a way to make it more accessible, more functional and more experiential.
The process of venue booking for your activity requirement is very time consuming and painful. It involves lots of phone calls, emails, filling in forms and contracts and is very paper-based. We knew this demands a better solution and is not just a problem that can be sorted from one side, the entire value chain has to be re-imagined to not just have an effortless demand but a consistent supply.
We are trying to reimagine and repurpose the functionality of PerSqFt in Hospitality industry as Third Spaces making it accessible, functional and experiential for any activity based gatherings (ABGs). We become the confluence of forces — Spaces X Users
From the Demand side aka Users, on our website, all the information you might need to find out about an event venue, including the price is at your fingertips. We allow our users to not just to search for a venue and collab with the Property but also to explore the property in a very event planner friendly format. With our domain expertise and having faced similar pain points - we do understand the power of technology to solve every day basic friction generating issues of this industry. We are giving users the tools to discover new venues along with the technology to do it efficiently.
Now talking about the Supply-side aka Spaces
As the population rises and the world is expanding vertically, where the battle for square footage rages on a daily basis. Yet many of our buildings sit empty at certain times of the day/month or maybe only a part of a mammoth property is considered to be qualified enough for any activity as other areas have not been provisioned to be catalogued well and sold with a strong proposition.
Spalba could change all this.
We use the concept of SPaaS (Space-as-a-Service), where we re-imagine every Per SQFT area available as a Third Space at any given space to make it accessible for booking by our users.
Space Owners can make additional revenue by leasing out their spaces in a unique format. Let’s say a 5-Star Hotel can offer co-working space in their lobby with wifi or maybe make their Suites available for hosting exclusive events. Likewise, a Theatre, for example, can act as a meeting spot during the day, while a coffee shop can moonlight as a site for a press launch.
When you start to think about space differently, suddenly your imagination is opened. Spaces around us can have so many multifunctional uses beyond their single-use purpose. . If owners start to give them new applications, it could change the whole price point for activity spaces.
This is what our purpose is at the end as we try to build a business around the problems that we see as a hindrance in the growth potential of other businesses from exuberant hotels to small boutique spaces by connecting them directly with users- the corporates, Event Agencies and Individual Event Planners who spend countless energy and manhours just to find that right space. Most of the times recce and planning also comes to be a money-draining process especially when sitting in one city you are planning something in a different city or country, the need for precision of understanding the venue and every detail around it goes bigger and bigger for the nitty-gritty of that perfect plan pitch.
The global event industry is expected to reach $ 2.3 Trillion by 2026 and for which “But Where?” is the foundation question, as every event plan starts with the search for the right space and this is where we as a business help other businesses to grow mutually by Sorting the “But Where?”