February 7, 2003
Hollywood, Florida – EventGuide was there from the start nearly a decade ago with Mark Metz, CEO and founder of MetroGuide.com, Inc. (MetroGuide), the family of travel and hospitality websites.
"Back in December of 1993, we began faxing a listing of local area events to South Florida businesses," said Metz, who still has faded fax-paper originals of those first EventGuide transmissions. People who received EventGuide faxes came to rely on their reliability and thoroughness, and public relations and advertising agencies came to rely on the EventGuide service as a way to get the word out broadly about client activities. Word spread, and people called insisting to be included in the distribution.
EventGuide moved to the Internet and expanded geographically in the mid-90s, but until recently the focus had been on providing a simple calendar of events, which, just like the fax, was organized solely by date. "Visitors were requesting the ability to search for specific event titles," said Metz. "Our new search engine allows them to find precisely the type of activity they want, in major markets worldwide, by entering just a key word or two."
Entering the word "jazz" into the search engine for EventGuide South Florida, for example, produces 17 listings, complete with event title, venue, location, day, date, time, contact and ticket information. "Happy hour" produces 66 listings. Visitors to the site, located at http://eventguide.com still can go to a particular date to see what's happening.
"With this new technology, I feel EventGuide has become the world-class product I always wanted it to be," said Metz. "We welcome submissions to the service, and as always, listing an event is absolutely free."
MetroGuide, located at http://metroguide.com, is among the largest Internet providers of global travel information and reservations. Incorporated in 1996 and privately held, MetroGuide's network of websites attracts more than two million unique visitors monthly to its quarter-million-plus pages of travel related e-commerce sites.
Having financed its venture entirely through internal sales growth and with no outside capital, MetroGuide generates tens-of-millions of dollars annually in on-line bookings through its proprietary database of more than 30,000 hotels and destination resorts. MetroGuide stands at the forefront of the battle to combat digital copyright piracy, with multiple recent court awards.
For more information contact Scott Rogers, (954) 981-5850.