How HVS Anarock transformed its flagship HOPE summit into a seamless, data-rich experience with Zoho Backstage
- INDUSTRY Hospitality Consulting
- EVENT TYPE In-person
The organization
HVS Anarock is the South Asia arm of HVS, one of the world's leading hospitality consulting firms. From its offices in Gurugram and Mumbai, the company advises hotel owners, operators, developers, and investors on valuations, feasibility studies, market intelligence, and strategic advisory.
Every year, HVS Anarock brings together the country's hospitality leaders through the Hospitality Overview Presentation & Exchange (HOPE), its flagship two-day conference. The 2025 edition, hosted at Taj Cidade de Goa Horizon, welcomed nearly 600 participants from renowned organizations, including senior executives from some of the world's leading hospitality brands.
For an audience of this calibre, every interaction—from registration to networking—shapes the overall event experience.
The challenge
As HOPE continued to grow, HVS Anarock found its manual registration and check-in process increasingly difficult to manage.
Delegate registrations were maintained in spreadsheets, attendance was tracked using printed lists, and check-in depended on someone manually verifying and marking it on a printed sheet at the venue entrance. The morning rush was the hardest part, with arrivals coming in clusters, managed by a paper list, and no quick way to know who was already inside.
The team realized they didn't need a bigger spreadsheet or more people to tick names off. They needed a faster, more scalable way to manage registrations, payments, and on-site check-ins without adding operational complexity.
"Last year, we were using Excel sheets and printouts to see who had come in and who had not."
The solution
HVS Anarock discovered Zoho Backstage and decided to try it in 2025. Registration became an automated workflow, allowing delegates to register and complete payments online without manual intervention.
"The registration part, wherein we could automate the entire registration—that was really useful."
At the venue, organizers used the Zoho Backstage mobile check-in app to welcome attendees. Since the app required minimal training, any team member could assist with check-ins, helping reduce queues during busy arrival periods.
To enhance the delegate experience, HVS Anarock also launched a white-labelled HOPE mobile app built on Zoho Backstage. Available on both iOS and Android, the app allowed attendees to browse the event agenda, discover and network with fellow delegates, schedule meetings, take notes during sessions, and save important content to a personal briefcase.
Throughout the event, the Zoho Backstage team also provided on-site support, helping ensure operations ran smoothly during the conference's busiest moments.
The Backstage features HVS Anarock uses:
- Automated event registration
- Online ticketing and payment collection
- Mobile check-in application
- White-labelled event mobile app
- Event agenda management
- Attendee networking
- On-site event support
Benefits & ROI
Moving to Zoho Backstage simplified registrations, one of the most operationally demanding parts of the conference, while the mobile check-in app gave the organizing team far greater flexibility on the day.
Simpler registration and check-in
Automating registration removed the spreadsheets and printed lists that had defined earlier editions, and the mobile check-in app made it possible for anyone on the team to welcome delegates—no specialist training required.
"It was the easiest registration and check-in process we had done in the last three years. Anybody in the team could use that app and check in people—it was easy, like anybody could do it."
Higher attendance and engagement
The impact extended well beyond event operations. The 2026 edition achieved a 75.5% attendance rate—an impressive figure for an invitation-led B2B hospitality conference—while around 80% of delegates downloaded the event app, significantly increasing engagement throughout the summit.
A better delegate experience
Networking emerged as one of the app's most appreciated features, with several senior hospitality executives sharing positive feedback directly with the Zoho team. Attendees also valued replacing traditional notebooks with digital note-taking and the in-app briefcase, making it easier to capture and organize insights during sessions.
Future plans
HVS Anarock has now used Zoho Backstage twice for its annual two-day conference. Following the success of consecutive editions, the team plans to continue using Zoho Backstage to manage HOPE.
With registration, ticketing, check-in, and delegate engagement now managed on a single platform, the team also has access to richer event data that will help optimize future editions of the conference.