At 6:57 on a conference morning, glamour is in short supply. A ballroom is half light and half cable. Someone wants a confidence monitor moved. Someone else has discovered that the chief executive’s slides use the wrong aspect ratio. The hotel needs the corridor cleared before breakfast service. In this hour, the important technology is not a particular projector. It is the working relationship among the people who know the room.
Pinnacle Live built a company around that observation. Founded in 2021 by event-industry veterans including Eddy Eisenberg, the privately held business provides audiovisual and production services inside hotels, resorts and convention properties. Its technicians are not strangers who roll through the loading dock for a single show. They are embedded at the venue, working beside hotel sales, banqueting and operations teams, learning which ballroom divides quietly, where the power drops sit and how long a room turn really takes.
That sounds like a subtle distinction until an event starts. A planner is buying sound, lighting, video, staging and rigging, but also relief from a coordination problem. A hotel is selling meeting space, but also staking its reputation on work performed by a technical partner. Pinnacle Live’s business sits at that seam. Its customers include hotels that want a dependable in-house operation and the companies, associations, agencies and meeting planners that use those properties.
The product is a clean handoff
Pinnacle Live calls itself “hotel first.” The phrase describes both its sales strategy and its operating system. Rather than optimize a regional pool of labor and equipment around whichever show is next, the company assigns teams to individual properties and gives venue leaders room to make local decisions. That team can advise a planner during the sales process, design the technical approach, coordinate with the hotel and run the event. Fewer handoffs mean fewer chances for intent to evaporate between proposal and show call.
The equipment list is broad but familiar to anyone in production: LED video walls, laser projectors, line-array and point-source audio, intelligent lighting, staging, rigging and content systems. Creative services add scenic design, backdrops, renderings and visual storytelling. Hybrid work brings streaming and digital audiences into the same production. The useful difference is contextual. A technically impressive design that ignores a room’s ceiling load or a hotel’s changeover schedule is not, in practice, an impressive design.
The network now covers more than 200 hotel partnerships in North America. Publicly named venues range from Omni properties to Fontainebleau Miami Beach, JW Marriott Miami Turnberry Resort & Spa and Pier Sixty-Six. Scale makes national relationships possible. Local fluency is supposed to keep that scale from turning every ballroom into the same template.
“Scale without consistency is a liability.”Paul Lowenthal, Chief Operating Officer
A service company wearing an AV headset
The economics are those of a B2B service platform rather than a software subscription. Hotel relationships can run for multiple years or confer preferred and exclusive status. Events generate revenue through equipment, technical labor, creative work and production management. Off-site assignments add project-based income from conferences, galas and brand activations. It is a portfolio built around recurring venue relationships and enlarged by individual productions.
Its 2022 agreement with Omni Hotels & Resorts offered an early demonstration of the model. The partnership covered on-site event technology across a large hotel portfolio. In 2023, Pinnacle Live opened 45 Omni operations on a single day - the kind of fact that reveals an operations company hiding beneath the show lights. Recruiting, training, inventory, property systems and customer communication all had to arrive together.
One event, three aligned customers
brand + space
production team
audience + outcome
This is where culture becomes more than recruiting copy. A venue technician has to think like a hospitality employee and a production specialist at once. Pinnacle Live emphasizes training, responsiveness and local autonomy; its internal Max Awards recognize venue directors, sales leaders and technicians. The tension is obvious: autonomy helps a team fit its property, while a national hotel partner expects consistency. The 2026 appointment of operations veteran Paul Lowenthal as chief operating officer made that balancing act explicit.
Buying breadth without losing the wedge
Pinnacle Live did not remain a collection of hotel AV desks. In August 2023 it merged with Seattle-based AVMS, expanding its geographic base and in-house relationships. AVMS was folded into the Pinnacle Live brand the following February. In May 2024, the company acquired Falcon Events, adding hybrid production, digital platforms and creative capabilities. Those moves gave the company more ways to follow a customer beyond a partner ballroom.
Today Pinnacle Live Productions handles complex events at hotels and off-site destinations, while EDGE by Pinnacle Live combines strategy, creative, technology and execution for experiential work. At PCMA edUcon in 2025, those layers appeared in one assignment: a venue team at the Omni Louisville, the national productions group and EDGE collaborated across two hotels. Account management, digital services, creative direction and live execution came from the same extended organization.
The chart is a map of breadth, not revenue. The point is strategic: hotel AV remains the anchor, nationwide production extends the relationship, and experiential services move upstream toward the brand idea. Customers can use one part or ask the company to connect all three. That offers a practical alternative to hiring separate venue, production and creative vendors, though independent specialists may still be the better fit for some briefs.
A challenger in a concentrated market
Hotel AV has long been associated with a dominant incumbent, Encore, which has global scale and deep venue coverage. Freeman and PRG compete for large productions, while INSPIRE, regional firms and independent agencies provide other choices. Pinnacle Live does not win by pretending equipment is rare. Screens, speakers and truss can be sourced. Its case is that aligned people, property knowledge and responsive decisions are scarcer.
That positioning explains the company’s repeated language about choice and partnership. A hotel owner wants event revenue and a provider that behaves like an extension of the property. A planner wants transparent options, fewer surprises and someone accountable when a room changes. A corporate brand wants the show to carry its message without making the machinery visible. Pinnacle Live is trying to serve all three without treating any one of them as merely the invoice recipient.
Sustainability follows the same operational logic. The company is a signatory of the Net Zero Carbon Events Pledge and says it uses rechargeable batteries, laser projection and energy-efficient lighting. Storing equipment on-site can reduce transportation. Pinnacle Live has said rechargeable batteries avoid roughly 155,000 single-use batteries annually. None of these choices will carry a keynote, but together they turn an abstract commitment into purchasing and logistics decisions.
The next room turn
Leadership has changed as the footprint has grown. Natalie De Fazio, previously president, became chief executive in June 2025. Co-founder Eddy Eisenberg moved from chief executive to executive chair and is now listed as a strategic advisor. In May 2026, Felicia Hamerman joined as chief marketing officer and Lowenthal as chief operating officer. The appointments suggest the next challenge is less about proving demand than keeping the experience coherent as the network expands.
Industry veterans build around embedded venue teams and local autonomy.
Forty-five hotel operations open in one day, followed by the August AVMS combination.
Hybrid, digital and creative production capabilities join through acquisition.
New venue partnerships arrive and Natalie De Fazio takes the top role.
A new CMO and COO are appointed to support national growth and consistency.
There is risk in every expansion. Acquisitions can produce overlapping processes. National standards can flatten local judgment. Experiential work can distract from a strong venue franchise. And competitors with larger international networks remain formidable. Pinnacle Live’s answer is to keep the embedded team as the unit that matters, while adding enough central capability to support bigger, more creative assignments.
Back in the ballroom, that strategy has a simple test. The screen has to light, the microphone has to work and the hotel corridor has to be clear by breakfast. Every small promise must survive contact with the show clock. If the planner experiences those outcomes as one smooth service rather than three vendors negotiating responsibility, the model has done its job. Pinnacle Live’s most interesting product is not the show people notice. It is the friction they do not.