DENVER, Colorado—Engine announced the expansion of Engine Groups into a complete group travel planning solution. Originally built for business travel, Engine Groups saw organizers increasingly turn to it for weddings, family reunions, and sports tournaments. This release added self-serve booking, tailored hotel recommendations, and a dedicated event page for RSVPs and booking.
Engine now recommends a booking approach for each event based on the group’s size, location, and needs, whether that’s curated hotel options guests book themselves or a negotiated room block Engine manages on the organizer’s behalf. Every event gets a dedicated page with real-time RSVP and booking visibility.
Engine Groups gives organizers access to a network of over 1 million hotels, with real-time visibility into RSVPs and bookings, and one place for guests to find the details they need.
“Our customers already turn to Engine to plan business travel like team offsites, sales kickoffs, and large meetings, and increasingly for life milestones like weddings and family reunions,” said Elia Wallen, founder and chief executive officer of Engine. “Opening Engine Groups so that anyone can book group hotels, for free, felt like a natural next step. There’s no reason planning a family reunion should be harder or more expensive than planning a company offsite.”
How Engine Groups works
- Create the event: The organizer sets the location, dates, and room count estimate. Everything guests need to know lives in one centralized place.
- Get hotel recommendations: Engine reviews the event details and recommends accommodations based on hotel inventory and the group’s specific needs, drawing on its network and negotiating power.
- Invite guests to book: Depending on group needs, Engine will recommend that guests either choose and self-book a hotel room from a list of curated hotel options, or that the organizer reserve a room block at one hotel. When self-booking, guests get the event page link to RSVP and book their own room. For room blocks, Engine runs the RFP on the organizer’s behalf, gathering proposals from hotels. Once secured, guests receive the event page with all trip details and are directed to the hotel’s booking link to reserve rooms.
- Track updates in real time: Organizers see RSVP status and itineraries in one view. Guests check the same event page for updates.
Engine Groups intelligently matches each event with the right booking approach and hotel options based on group size, event type, location, dates, and organizer needs. This launch lays the foundation for AI planning capabilities coming later this year.
