Venuetastic is an application for venue owners to promote their spaces and event planners to find and book venues that suit their purposes. Venues provide photos, available rooms, details and reviews, as well as the capacity and pricing information. Planners can seek venues by filtering results based on their needs.

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Venuetastic was founded by Helen Belogolova and Christine Yen in December 2010. There is no traffic information available for the application at this time. The application is backed by Y Combinator, a program that funds digital entrepreneurs.

The application is made to streamline the event planning process to assist with discovering and booking venues and more.

The dashboard offers several options: search venues, add new venue, favorites, create event, edit profile, edit account settings, edit reminders, and rewards as well as lists of upcoming and past events. There is also a link to create an event.

Searching venues reveals the limitations of the new site. There are only 572 venues listed, and none near the test area. It appears that venues at this time are mostly, if not all, located in California. To search for a venue, users enter an address, city, state, or zip code and the number of people that need to be accommodated at the event. To filter results, users may indicate whether the event is a meal or a meeting, what type of party options (corporate, cocktail, holiday, social, religious, baby or wedding shower, fundraiser, or alumni gathering.

The next filter option is category. The user may indicate a preference for restaurant, bar, lounge, club, café, gallery, wine bar, or pub. Users may include distance from the original location in miles, as well as fanciness on a scale of 1-10. From there, dates may be chosen as well as a budget range. Privacy options such as private, shared, partitioned, or outdoor, further filter results. Indications of desired amenities include WiFi, A/V equipment, type of available parking, meal, catering preferences, and alcohol options.

A listing of results is provided and users can check off those they wish to compare. Comparison indicates name, type of event the venue is good for, location, privacy, and lowest budget. Any of these may be “favorited” for later viewing.

To create an event, the user must enter the event title, location, crowd size, “feel” of venue (e.g. rustic, classy) and additional details. This redirects users to the requested dates, time range, requested spaces in the venue, and drink and food options. When completed, an inquiry email is sent to the owner of the venue and the user then waits for a response from the venue to confirm the reservation.

The site offers rewards for each dollar spent on an event booked through Venuetastic towards gift cards.

Sign up requires a first and last name, email, password, and whether the user is an event organizer or venue owner. For the purposes of this review, “event organizer” was chosen.

There are two pricing plans available for venue owners. The free plan offers the design and maintenance of the detail listing page, including sourcing and organizing information. It also includes photography of the venue. Availability syncing and maintenance, contact reminders, document management of contracts and menus (and any others that need managing), payment processing, and basic data analytics are all included.

The paid plans start at $93 per month. They add custom additions to the detail listing page, video, advanced data analytics, search optimization, advertisement, and a widget. There is no reference to other plans. Users apparently must contact Venutastic for a custom quote.

Event planners living in an area covered by the current venues will find this application helpful. As it grows, and more venues are added, it will be much more useful to a larger number of event planners.

• Free to use
• Easy interface
• Filters to ensure appropriate results
• Not available in all areas
• Live feedback chat

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