URBI gives buildings and schools one system for the whole event: plan it, announce it in the app, by push, and on lobby screens, sell tickets or take RSVPs, manage the waitlist automatically, check people in at the door, and read an AI survey report when it ends.
Why do so few people show up to building events?
Think about how most building events actually get run. Someone designs a poster and tapes it next to the elevator. Someone sends an email blast that lands in spam or gets buried by Monday morning. RSVPs come back as replies, sticky notes, and hallway promises, and someone copies them into a spreadsheet that is out of date the moment it is saved. Nobody knows how much food to order. Nobody knows who actually came. And when it is over, the only feedback is a vague feeling about whether people seemed happy.
The result is predictable. Turnout is a guess. Budgets are a guess. The next event is planned on the same guesses. It is not that residents, tenants, or families do not want community. It is that the announcement never reliably reached them, and signing up was harder than staying home.
URBI was built around a different idea: the event should live in the same system people already use to pay, book amenities, and talk to the building. When the invitation, the ticket, and the reminder all arrive in the app someone opens every week anyway, showing up stops being a coincidence. If you are new to the platform, start with what URBI is for the full picture.
What does URBI's event system include?
This is a full event stack, not a calendar entry with a description field. Every event in URBI carries the things a real organizer needs:
- The basics: title, description, policy, start and end times, location, a hero image, and a maximum occupancy.
- An amenity link: tie the event to the party room, rooftop, gym, or auditorium so the space and the event stay connected.
- Ticketing and RSVPs: paid tickets or free signups, handled entirely in the app.
- An automatic waitlist: when the event fills, new signups queue up and get promoted automatically when spots open.
- Vendor management: caterers, entertainers, rentals, photographers, decor, security, and activity providers apply for slots on the event, and their payment status is tracked from pending through deposit paid, paid, and invoiced.
- Operational detail: supplies lists, a timeline, staff assignments, emergency contacts, and an incidents log with severity levels.
- AI planning and reporting: AI generated event plans draft a run of show, and after the event, surveys feed an AI summary report.
Events move through clear stages: draft, published, cancelled, completed. Nothing goes out to the community until you publish, and everything that happens is on the record.
How does URBI get the word out?
This is where most event tools fall short. A great signup page is worthless if nobody sees it. URBI announces the event everywhere the community already looks, all from one place:
- The app home screen. The home banner rotates featured content, and events are one of its core types. Your event sits front and center the moment someone opens the app.
- News posts. Publish an announcement with your choice of audience, whole building, specific floors, or a custom group, and your choice of delivery. Posts can be scheduled ahead of time.
- Push notifications. Delivery goes straight to phones on iOS and Android, with email as an additional channel.
- URBI Display. Lobby and elevator screens show upcoming events alongside building news and weather. The poster by the elevator still exists, but now it is digital, always current, and updates itself. Read more in our piece on real time building communication with URBI Display.
And here is the part posters and email blasts can never give you: URBI tracks who saw the announcement, per person. You are no longer hoping the message landed. You know.
How do ticketing, RSVPs, and the waitlist work?
Selling tickets to a building event usually means a third party ticketing site, a separate account, and money flowing somewhere the board cannot see. URBI does it differently. Each property is its own Stripe connected account, so ticket revenue lands directly in the property's own Stripe balance. The platform never holds the money. Residents and tenants pay in the app with Apple Pay or Google Pay, and event tickets can even go into Apple Wallet.
Every ticket has a clear status: valid, used, waitlisted, cancelled, or refunded. Each one carries its ticket number, its waitlist position if it has one, and the exact moment it was promoted off the waitlist or scanned at the door. Refunds are recorded on the ticket itself.
Underneath the tickets sits an RSVP ledger, the authoritative record of who is actually coming. It tracks confirmation and attendance separately from ticket validity, which matters in practice: a paid ticket can still be held pending a signed waiver until check in time. For events that require waivers, active waivers gate entry, so nobody walks into the rooftop social without the paperwork the building requires.
The waitlist deserves its own mention because it is fully automatic. Capacity capped events, the school play, prom, a wellness session with twenty spots, are exactly where manual lists collapse. In URBI, when someone cancels, the next person is promoted, timestamped, and notified. No organizer refreshing a spreadsheet at midnight.
Who is this built for?
One product serves three worlds, and the event system speaks each one's language. In residential buildings, that means holiday parties, AGM adjacent socials, and community nights. In commercial properties, it means tenant appreciation events, lunch and learns, wellness pop ups, sustainability briefings, and town halls; we wrote a full guide on events as a tenant experience strategy. In schools, it means school plays, athletic games, fundraisers, fall festivals, graduation, and prom, ticketed, capacity managed, and waiver aware.
What happens after the event ends?
Most event tools stop at the door. URBI closes the loop. Attendees receive surveys, and an AI summary report turns the responses into something an organizer can actually act on, so the honest answer to "how did it go?" is a report, not a shrug. If anything went wrong during the event, the incidents log captured it with a severity level, tied to the event record where the board or leadership can review it.
That means every event teaches the next one. You know who saw the announcement, who signed up, who came, what they thought, and what to change. Guessing is no longer part of the job.
Frequently asked questions
Can we run free events, or is it ticketing only?
Both. URBI handles free RSVP events and paid ticketed events in the same flow. Either way you get the RSVP ledger, the automatic waitlist, per person announcement tracking, and the post event survey with an AI summary report. Many buildings mix the two: free community nights alongside ticketed fundraisers or premium experiences.
Where does ticket money go?
Directly to the property. Each building or school in URBI is its own Stripe connected account, and ticket revenue lands in that account's balance. The platform never holds the money. Attendees pay in the app, with Apple Pay and Google Pay supported, and refunds are recorded on the individual ticket.
How does the waitlist decide who gets in?
By position, automatically. When an event hits its maximum occupancy, new signups join the waitlist in order. When a spot opens, the next person is promoted and the promotion is timestamped on their ticket. Organizers never manage this by hand, and attendees never wonder where they stand in line.
Can outside vendors be part of an event?
Yes. Vendors apply for slots on the event across categories like catering, entertainment, rentals, photography, decor, security, and activities. Their payment status is tracked from pending through deposit paid, paid, and invoiced, so the organizer sees the whole vendor picture on the same event record as the tickets and the timeline.
If your events deserve better than posters and spreadsheets, we would love to show you the whole lifecycle in one demo. Write to hello@myurbi.co and tell us about the next event on your calendar.
