The company that put the ballroom online
Booking a hotel room takes ninety seconds. Booking a hotel ballroom - for a 500-person conference, an annual dinner, or a product launch - has traditionally taken a week of phone calls, emailed quotes, and site visits. HXE, founded in Beijing in 2010 and known at home as Huixiaoer, was built to close that gap.
The company runs an online marketplace for the corner of travel the industry calls MICE - Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions. On its platform, corporate planners can search venues, compare prices, and arrange the surrounding logistics - catering, guest rooms, transportation - in one place. What was once a fragmented, offline process becomes a search bar and a booking flow.
That focus has scaled. HXE aggregates more than 150,000 hotels and event venues, reports serving over 400,000 corporate clients, and settles an estimated 50,000-plus reservations a year. By its own accounting, the venue spend flowing through the platform tops US$1.4 billion annually - a figure larger than the revenue of many of the hotels it lists.
Figures are drawn from HXE / Eventbest public materials and third-party company databases (Tracxn, Crunchbase). Round funding amounts are undisclosed; some totals are company estimates and should be read as approximate.
The problem: events run on phone calls and spreadsheets
Corporate event procurement is high-value, recurring, and stubbornly manual. A planner deciding where to hold a conference has to reach out to venues individually, wait on custom quotes, and reconcile catering, room blocks and logistics from separate vendors - often without ever seeing the space. Trust and comparison are hard when nothing is standardized.
HXE's answer is to standardize the demand side. It centralizes venue data so buyers can compare rooms, capacities and pricing; it collects quotes; and it bundles the add-ons - food and beverage, accommodation, logistics, concierge support - into a single procurement flow. For hotels, the platform is a digital demand channel that fills their largest and most profitable spaces. For planners, it collapses a week of coordination into a workflow.
China's top online meeting matching platform - precision-matching domestic conference needs with overseas resources.
- How HXE describes itself in public materialsOne company, two brands, several front doors
HXE Meeting Resource Booking Platform
The Chinese marketplace (huixiaoer.com) for booking meeting and event venues, with venue data, price comparison and one-stop procurement of catering, accommodation and logistics.
Eventbest
HXE's international face (eventbest.com), covering MICE venues and hotel conference rooms across Asia, the USA and the UAE - for annual dinners, training, seminars, launches and incentive trips.
Global MICE Booking with Langham
The first global online booking service for MICE venues and group business activities, spanning Langham hotels in London, New York, Toronto, Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Melbourne and Auckland.
hotel.vip app
A mobile app in the HXE ecosystem bringing hotel and venue services to travelers, released on the US App Store.
Event types the platform handles
A two-sided marketplace for the meetings economy
HXE sits between two groups with a coordination problem. On one side are corporate buyers who need venues on demand; on the other, hotels with expensive ballrooms and conference floors to fill. HXE aggregates the supply, owns the buyer relationship, and monetizes the bookings - typically through commissions on reservations and value-added event services. Searching and requesting quotes is free for planners, which is how the platform accumulates demand.
That demand is HXE's real moat. In a fragmented market, the platform that consolidates 400,000 corporate buyers becomes the channel hotels can't ignore - which is why groups from Marriott to Langham have signed on. Where Western incumbents like Cvent grew up around event software and registration, HXE grew up around Chinese venue supply and the buyers moving through it, then followed those buyers abroad.
Where HXE sits in a crowded field
Relative scale, illustrative - based on HXE-reported platform figures.
Competitors and alternatives include Cvent, Convene, Peerspace, Group360, HRS Group and MeetingPackage - alongside the default HXE was built to replace: offline event agencies and hotel direct-sales teams.
The hotel groups behind the platform
Supply is assembled one hotel group at a time. HXE's roster spans the world's largest chains and China's biggest hospitality and real-estate players - the inventory that makes the marketplace worth searching.
Founders & funding
Peter Yang
Also listed as Liang Yang across public records; leads HXE's product and global expansion.
Jin Guo
Part of the founding team behind Beijing Huixiaoer Information Technology Co., Ltd.
Lanfeng Zeng
Co-founded the company at its 2010 launch in Beijing.
Led by IDG Capital
First institutional round, funding the build-out of the venue-booking platform across China. Amount undisclosed.
DCM Ventures & IDG Capital
Co-led round fueling inventory growth and product expansion. Amount undisclosed.
From Beijing startup to global platform
- 2010
Huixiaoer founded in Beijing
Peter (Liang) Yang, Jin Guo and Lanfeng Zeng establish Beijing Huixiaoer Information Technology Co., Ltd.
- 2014
Series A from IDG Capital
First institutional funding scales the meeting-venue booking platform across China.
- 2016
Series B co-led by DCM Ventures & IDG Capital
Fresh capital fuels inventory growth and expansion into more Chinese cities.
- 2024
Global launch with Langham & Eventbest
HXE launches the first global online MICE booking service with Langham and expands abroad under the Eventbest brand.
What makes HXE unusual
"Huixiaoer" is the Chinese brand; "Eventbest" is the same company's face to the rest of the world - one platform, two front doors.
As Chinese multinationals expand globally, HXE follows them - making sure they can book a venue in New York or London the same way they would at home.
HXE estimates it routes over US$1.4 billion in venue spend a year - bigger than many of the hotels it books.
Its tooling mixes Slack, Google Tag Manager and Baidu Ads - a tech footprint that mirrors its cross-border reach.
Common questions
What does HXE (Huixiaoer) do?
It runs an online marketplace for booking meeting and event venues - hotel conference rooms, banquet halls and related services like catering, accommodation and logistics - primarily for corporate clients in China and, increasingly, worldwide.
What is the difference between Huixiaoer, HXE and Eventbest?
They are the same company. Huixiaoer (huixiaoer.com) is the Chinese brand, HXE is the international abbreviation, and Eventbest (eventbest.com) is the global-facing brand.
Who are HXE's customers?
Corporate event and meeting planners, HR and administrative teams, and enterprises organizing conferences, annual dinners, training, product launches, incentive trips and group business travel. HXE reports 400,000+ clients.
Who funds HXE?
HXE raised a Series A led by IDG Capital in 2014 and a Series B co-led by DCM Ventures and IDG Capital in 2016. Round amounts are undisclosed.
Which hotel groups partner with HXE?
HXE works with major hotel groups including Marriott, Hilton, IHG/InterContinental, Shangri-La, Wyndham, Accor and Langham, plus Chinese groups such as Wanda and Country Garden, spanning 150,000+ venues.
Explore & share HXE
Official & reference links
Watch & explore
No official HXE video channel was confirmed at publication - the links above run live YouTube searches for interviews and demos.