If you are searching for "HotelShare alternatives" in 2026, you are probably one of three planners. Either you are a one-person events team in the UK who started with HotelShare and now needs more workflow features. Or you are a continental European planner whose local hotel coverage on HotelShare is patchy. Or you are a procurement or finance lead who needs a tool with a real audit trail for your compliance gates. This article walks through eight realistic alternatives, what each one is best at, and the migration path that minimizes disruption.
HotelShare is a UK-rooted hotel sourcing platform that grew up serving small UK and Ireland event teams. It does the basics well: send an RFP to a shortlist of hotels, collect responses, pick a winner. The reasons we hear from planners migrating away cluster into five categories:
| Tool | Best for | Planner pricing (2026) | European coverage strength |
|---|---|---|---|
| Easy RFP | Structured RFPs with BAFO and multi-currency normalization | Free during beta, then from 39 EUR/month | Iberia, France, DACH, Italy, Benelux, Eastern Europe |
| MeetingPackage | Instant booking of small meetings under 50 attendees | Free (commission paid by venue) | Nordics, UK, parts of DACH |
| Cvent | Enterprise event teams with full event tech stack | From 15,000 EUR/year | Broadest global network (legacy Lanyon) |
| Groupize | Mid-market North American planners with European travel | Custom, typically 8,000 to 20,000 EUR/year | Strong North America, moderate Europe |
| Bizly | SMB and mid-market US planners with light Europe usage | Free planner tier with paid upgrades | Strong US, light Europe |
| Conference Compare | UK and Ireland planners with traditional venue agency hybrid | Commission-based | UK, Ireland, parts of mainland Europe |
| Venue Directory | UK planners doing high volume of small meetings | Free for planners, paid venue listings | UK strong, Europe moderate |
| Venue agency (HelmsBriscoe, MCI, BCD M&E) | Complex one-off events over 80,000 EUR budget | Free to planner, commission paid by venue (8 to 12 percent) | Global, relationship driven |
Easy RFP is a structured RFP tool built specifically for European MICE planners. The planner writes the RFP once (room block, F and B requirements, AV needs, dates, attendees, budget cap), the system sends to a shortlist with the right capacity, and tracks responses, counter-offers, and a BAFO round. Output is a side by side comparison with totals normalized in EUR (locks the FX rate at quote time), plus a full audit trail for procurement.
What HotelShare users gain: BAFO rounds (typically 8 to 14 percent additional savings on Round 1), multi-currency normalization, auto-chasers (3 nudges over 7 days lifting response rates to 78 to 84 percent based on internal benchmarks), and an audit trail that satisfies most procurement gates.
What HotelShare users lose: The platform is newer, so brand recognition with hotel sales teams is still building. UK coverage is solid but not at HotelShare depth in Tier 3 cities.
Pricing: Free during beta for planners. After beta, Pro from 39 EUR/month. Hotels never pay.
Helsinki-based marketplace. You search a city and date, see venues with instant-bookable rates, and book online without writing an RFP. Optimized for small meetings under 50 attendees. For larger events the platform falls back to a quote request flow. The planner side is free; the venue side pays commission.
Best for: Boardrooms, training days, single-day workshops, day delegate packages. Anything you would book through the venue's own website if it had a good booking engine.
Trade-off: Not really a HotelShare replacement for complex multi-hotel sourcing. Use as a complement, not a substitute.
For a deeper look at MeetingPackage specifically, see our honest MeetingPackage vs Easy RFP comparison.
The category gorilla. Cvent owns the Lanyon supplier network (acquired in 2017) which gives it the broadest hotel database in the industry. Cvent bundles RFP, room block management (Passkey), registration, attendee management, mobile event app, and budgeting into one platform. Pricing starts around 15,000 EUR per year for small teams and runs into six figures for enterprise.
Best for: In-house event teams of 5 or more managing 50+ events per year with full event tech requirements (registration, mobile app, room blocks, lead retrieval).
Trade-off: Overkill and overpriced for one-person events teams. Most HotelShare users moving to Cvent end up using 20 percent of the feature set at 100 percent of the price. Worth checking Cvent alternatives for European planners first.
US-rooted RFP tool with a clean planner interface. Strong on small meetings and group hotel bookings. European inventory is moderate and growing. Pricing typically lands at 8,000 to 20,000 EUR per year for mid-market plans.
Best for: US event teams with regular European travel, where a single tool spans both regions.
Trade-off: European-only planners are paying for North American inventory they will never use. The Europe-native tools (MeetingPackage, Easy RFP) match the use case more directly.
US-based meeting management platform with a free planner tier. Optimized for SMB and mid-market US event teams. European venue inventory exists but is thin relative to native European tools.
Best for: US planners with occasional Europe trips who want a single tool.
Trade-off: Same critique as Groupize. If your sourcing is 80 percent Europe, a European-native tool serves you better.
UK-based hybrid model: software plus a small human team that helps with sourcing for larger events. Commission-based on the venue side, free for planners. Strong UK and Ireland inventory, with growing mainland European reach.
Best for: UK or Ireland based planners who want a software tool with a human safety net for the occasional complex brief.
Trade-off: The hybrid model means cycle times depend partly on the human team's bandwidth. Pure-software tools typically move faster on simple briefs.
UK marketplace that has been around since the late 1990s. Free for planners, monetized through paid venue listings and ad placements. Strong UK coverage, especially for hotels under 100 rooms and traditional country house venues.
Best for: UK planners doing high volume of small meetings who want a directory style search rather than a structured RFP flow.
Trade-off: Closer to a directory than a sourcing tool. Workflow features (counter-offers, side by side scoring, BAFO) are limited.
Not software but worth including. Venue agencies provide a human sourcing manager who runs the RFP, negotiates with hotels, and books on your behalf. Free to the planner because hotels pay 8 to 12 percent commission. The largest agency is HelmsBriscoe (over 1,500 associates globally); other major players include MCI Group, BCD Meetings & Events, American Express GBT Meetings, ConferenceDirect, and ConferenceCare.
Best for: Complex one-off events over 80,000 EUR budget where the agency commission pays for itself in negotiated savings, or for planners who simply do not have time to run the sourcing themselves.
Trade-off: The agency commission is invisible to the planner but gets baked into hotel rates. For budget-sensitive procurement teams, the visibility of a tool-based approach is preferable. Most planners use both: a tool for routine briefs, an agency for the complex one-offs.
| Region | Strongest tool | Decent backup |
|---|---|---|
| UK and Ireland | HotelShare, Conference Compare, Venue Directory | Easy RFP, Cvent |
| Nordics (FI, SE, NO, DK) | MeetingPackage | Easy RFP, Cvent |
| Germany, Austria, Switzerland | Easy RFP | MeetingPackage, Cvent |
| France, Belgium, Netherlands | Easy RFP | Cvent, MeetingPackage |
| Spain, Portugal, Italy | Easy RFP | Cvent, venue agency |
| Eastern Europe (PL, CZ, HU, RO) | Easy RFP | Cvent, venue agency |
| North America (occasional EU planner trips) | Cvent, Groupize, Bizly | Venue agency |
Switching tools always feels risky because your hotel relationships, RFP templates, and workflow muscle memory are tied to the current platform. The 90-day playbook below is what we have seen work for planners moving away from HotelShare without disrupting their event pipeline.
Keep HotelShare for all in-flight RFPs. Set up the new tool with your top 20 most-used hotels imported as a CSV shortlist. Run two new briefs through the new tool while running everything else through HotelShare. The goal at this stage is not migration, just validation that the new tool's response rates and coverage match your event mix.
Move all small meeting briefs (under 50 attendees, single day) to the new tool. Keep HotelShare for the complex multi-night programs. By day 45 you should have processed 8 to 15 simple briefs and have real comparative data on cycle time, response rate, and savings.
If the simple briefs went well, start moving multi-night programs and conferences to the new tool. Run BAFO rounds, multi-currency normalization, and the full procurement audit trail. This is where Easy RFP and Cvent earn their position vs HotelShare; if the new tool does not handle a complex brief better than HotelShare, you should reconsider.
Export your full HotelShare history (RFPs, responses, decisions) as PDF or CSV. Archive in your Google Drive or Sharepoint folder for compliance. Cancel the HotelShare subscription. Notify your top 30 hotel contacts that future RFPs will arrive from the new platform; this lift response rates by 5 to 10 percent in our internal data, because the hotel sales team is expecting your name.
The most common pattern we see among European in-house planners is to run two tools in parallel rather than picking one. The pattern works because the tools cover different points of the funnel.
Total annual cost of a sensible 2-tool stack (MeetingPackage plus Easy RFP) is well under 1,000 EUR for a one-person team. For comparison, the same team on Cvent pays 15,000 to 25,000 EUR per year for software they will mostly underutilize. The hybrid approach is one of the highest-leverage cost optimizations available to European event teams in 2026.
Question 1. What is the average attendee count of your last 12 months of events? If under 50 attendees in 70 percent of events, lead with MeetingPackage. If over 50 in 70 percent of events, lead with Easy RFP. If mixed, run both.
Question 2. Does your procurement team require a documented sourcing audit trail? If yes, you need Easy RFP, Cvent, or a venue agency. MeetingPackage's booking confirmation does not satisfy most procurement gates.
Question 3. Is your annual sourcing budget over 25,000 EUR for software (excluding venue costs)? If yes, Cvent enters the comparison. If no, the realistic shortlist is Easy RFP plus MeetingPackage at well under 1,000 EUR per year combined.
The hotels do not belong to the platform. They belong to the relationships. Export your top 30 hotel contacts from HotelShare as a CSV (most plans support this on demand) and import to the new tool. Your contact at Hilton Madrid or Sofitel Lisbon will recognize your name, not the platform name. Response rates typically recover within 60 days of cutover.
For tools that are free for hotels (Easy RFP, MeetingPackage, venue agency), hotels respond because there is no cost barrier. For tools that charge hotels per RFP, response rates can suffer over time. The free-for-hotels position is a structural advantage worth weighing in your tool choice.
Use HotelShare for the immediate event, but spin up an account on the new tool today and run a parallel test brief in the same city. The 30-minute setup pays back the moment you have data on response rates and coverage for your real workflow.
All major European tools (Easy RFP, MeetingPackage, Cvent's EU instance) are GDPR compliant and EU-headquartered or EU-hosted. If you are in a regulated industry (pharma, banking, defense), check the latest DPA on each vendor's site. Easy RFP additionally runs Zero Data Retention agreements with its AI model providers, which matters if your company prohibits AI training on internal data.
For a one-person events team the realistic migration cost is 8 to 16 hours of your time over 90 days (CSV imports, tool setup, parallel briefs, contact notifications). At a fully-loaded planner cost of 50 EUR per hour that is 400 to 800 EUR. The annual cost saving from moving off an enterprise tool to a hybrid stack is typically 8,000 to 20,000 EUR. Payback is well under one quarter.
This blog is published by Easy RFP. We are one of the eight tools compared above. The framing of the article is shaped by a planner-side worldview, which is also Easy RFP's positioning. HotelShare and the other tools listed might describe the same comparison differently and we encourage you to read their materials before deciding.
The single most useful thing you can do is run a 30-day parallel test on 3 real briefs from your queue. Pick three real briefs. Run one through your current tool, one through Easy RFP, and one through one other shortlisted alternative. Measure: time to first response, total cycle time, response rate, savings vs ASR, and your own qualitative experience. The data from your own briefs is more valuable than any vendor comparison post.
Free during beta. No credit card required. First RFP can be live in under 10 minutes.
Start a free RFPThe most common reasons are coverage gaps outside the UK, limited workflow features for complex multi-hotel sourcing (counter-offers, BAFO, multi-currency normalization), and pricing that does not match a one-person events team. Some planners also want a tool that does not charge hotels per RFP.
Easy RFP (free during beta, free for hotels forever) and MeetingPackage (free for planners, commission paid by venues) are the realistic free options. Easy RFP is closer to HotelShare on structured RFPs. MeetingPackage wins for instant-bookable small meetings under 50 attendees.
Coverage shifts month to month. As a 2026 guide, Cvent has the broadest network, MeetingPackage is strong in Nordics and UK, Easy RFP is strong in Iberia, France, DACH, Italy, and Benelux. Always test with your real shortlist.
Most European planners use both. Tools handle structured workflow at low or zero cost. Venue agencies handle complex one-off events where you need a human negotiator. The breakeven is roughly 80,000 to 150,000 EUR per event.
Export past RFPs as PDF or CSV from HotelShare. Archive in your Google Drive or Sharepoint for compliance. Run your next 3 real briefs through the new tool in parallel for 30 to 60 days before fully cutting over. Easy RFP imports historical hotel shortlists from CSV in under five minutes.
HotelShare offers basic export to Excel and PDF and partner integrations with select PMS systems. For native CRM and HRIS sync (Salesforce, HubSpot, Workday), Cvent and Bizzabo lead the category but cost 10 to 50x more. For most one-person events teams the export-to-CSV pattern is enough.
Free during beta. Free for hotels forever. EU-hosted. GDPR compliant.
Start a free RFP