VIP tickets & hospitalityCorporate hospitality: allocate every ticket, track every seat

Corporate hospitality means hosting clients, partners and employees at events, usually with seats from a sponsorship deal. AirLST is the corporate ticket management platform behind it: allocations per market, approvals, personal tickets, check-in and a record of every seat for compliance, tax and sponsorship reporting.

Book a demo Follow the path of a seat ↓
World CupOpening match · Hospitality Level 3
  • 3,000Tickets in allocationsacross all matches
    Hospitality ready
  • 91Subsidiariesconnected worldwide
  • 16Stadiumsin the host countries
  • 1Database for all marketssingle source of truth
  • 24Races2026 season
    Season live
  • 21Countrieson five continents
  • 196Hospitality packagespaddock, terrace, suite
  • 900VIP guestsincluding plus-ones
  • 56Matchesacross the season
    Matchday 12
  • 18Stadiumsevery club in the league
  • 67Suite bookingsabout 1.2 per match
  • 1Platform for all suitesone team, one status
  • 1Sponsorship deal2026/27 season
    Semifinal
  • 2,000Ticketsfrom one allocation
  • 156Shuttle runshotel, airport, stadium
  • 17Match weeksleague phase to final
Trusted by leading event teams and companies
Heineken Paulaner Mercedes-Benz Zalando Amazon New Yorker

A sponsorship deal delivers seats.AirLST delivers the guests, the documentation and the proof.

  • 15,000VIP tickets at Heineken
  • 78countries in one system
  • Per seatproof on record
  1. Sponsorship deal
  2. Seats
  3. Guests
  4. Documentation
  5. Proof
The path of a seat

From contract to proof. Five steps, one record.

01 · Allocate

Manage allocations centrally.

Every subsidiary, partner and department gets its own allocation with a seat budget. Returned seats go back into the pool, replacements wait on the waitlist.

03 · Approve

Approve first. Then invite.

The approval status triggers invitation and ticket, logged with name and time.

04 · Invite

One ticket per guest.

QR code as PDF or mobile wallet ticket, plus the calendar file. Plus-ones are linked to the main guest.

05 · Check-in & proof

One scan. One record per seat.

The check-in app shows guest, plus-ones and seat. Afterwards it is on record who attended, as an export for finance and tax.

Who works with it

Four teams. One status.

Sponsorship team

Distributes the allocation and sees the status per market in real time.

  • Allocations per unit
  • Returns and waitlist
  • Live utilization

Markets & partners

Register their own guests, only within their own allocation.

  • Own list, own permissions
  • Invitation in your brand design
  • Plus-ones and preferences

Compliance & tax

Approves before anyone is invited and receives the documentation.

  • Approval with audit trail
  • Gift value per guest
  • Export for tax reporting

Check-in team

Scans the ticket and sees right away who is standing in front of them.

  • Valid once only
  • Plus-ones with the guest
  • Same status at every station
HeinekenUEFA Champions League · Formula 1 Customer story · Heineken

One allocation. 78 countries. One system.

Heineken distributes its hospitality allocation for the UEFA Champions League and Formula 1 with AirLST.

  • 15,000VIP tickets
  • 78Countries
  • 500Users in the system

Industries with these formats: sports hospitality, automotive, media and entertainment, plus the solutions for premiere events and conference management.

More customer stories and case studies →
Background

A ticket allocation is a financial transaction, not a guest directory.

Seats at major events get cross-charged, taxed and audited. Four areas that decide whether an invitation holds up.

4Data points per seat

Cross-charge without chasing anyone.

Recipient, receiving unit, value and attendance: that is all finance needs. But per seat.

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Seats from a sponsorship deal are cross-charged: to subsidiaries, cost centers, brands and sometimes partners. Finance does not need a guest list for that, it needs an assignment: seat, recipient, receiving unit, value, attended or not.

What AirLST provides: an allocation per unit, every guest assigned to exactly one allocation, custom fields for cost center, market and gift value, attendance per guest, export and REST API into your own system.

What AirLST is not: a billing system. Cross-charging happens in your ERP. AirLST provides the records it relies on.

3Questions every tax team asks per seat

Tax follows the seat, not the suite.

How hospitality is taxed depends on the country. What every tax team asks for is the same: who received which seat, what it was worth, and whether it was used.

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The rules are set by each country and assessed by your finance and tax teams. AirLST does not decide how a seat is treated; it provides the documentation those teams need: recipient, value, approval and attendance per seat, under approval rules you define.

Example: German law. For companies hosting from Germany, the host can pay a flat 30 percent tax on gifts to business partners instead of the recipient being taxed. For hospitality packages, guidance from the Federal Ministry of Finance allows a flat split of the total: 40 percent advertising, 30 percent hospitality, 30 percent gift (50/50 between gift and hospitality if the package includes no advertising). The Federal Fiscal Court ruled in 2023 that the unit is the individual seat provided: seats that stayed empty are excluded. Companies that can prove which seats were actually used pay less.

What AirLST provides: attendance per seat, approval with name and timestamp, a flag for public officials, gift value as a field, and a report per recipient as an export for your tax team.

  • Germany: Income Tax Act (EStG), § 37b
  • Germany: Federal Ministry of Finance (BMF) letters of August 22, 2005 and July 11, 2006
  • German Federal Fiscal Court (BFH), ruling of November 23, 2023, VI R 15/21
3Services on one guest record: ticket, travel, hotel

Ticket, flight, hotel: it quickly becomes a trip.

If you bundle travel services for guests, you can end up with the duties of a tour operator. Check the rules that apply to you before you book.

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Adding a flight and a hotel to the ticket means you are not just giving away a seat, you are putting travel services together. Whether that creates obligations depends on the law that applies to you; your legal team assesses it. What it needs is a clear record of which services you provided and which the guest booked.

Example: German law. Sections 651a et seq. of the German Civil Code (BGB) govern when this becomes a package tour, with the obligations of a tour operator up to insolvency protection. Section 651a(5) BGB lists exemptions, among others trips offered only occasionally, on a not-for-profit basis and only to a limited group of people, day trips under 24 hours without an overnight stay up to 500 euros, and business travel under a framework agreement with a business. The exemptions are narrow, their conditions must all be met, and invited clients are not your own business travelers. That is why large sponsors document clearly which services they provide themselves and which the guest books.

What AirLST provides: travel details per guest (mode of arrival and departure, flight or train number, times, shuttle), hotel management with room types and allocations, and add-on services per guest. All on the same record as ticket and attendance, so it can be verified.

  • Germany: Civil Code (BGB), sections 651a et seq., in particular section 651a(5)
  • Directive (EU) 2015/2302 on package travel
  • Germany: Civil Code (BGB), section 651w, linked travel arrangements
1Approval before every invitation

Approve first, then invite.

With business partners and public officials, a documented approval is the proof, not a formality.

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Invitations to business partners and public officials touch anti-bribery law: in Germany sections 299 and 331 et seq. of the Criminal Code (StGB), internationally the UK Bribery Act and the FCPA. That is why a documented approval before the invitation goes out is not a convenience but your evidence.

With global distribution, data protection comes in as well: guest data from many countries means international data transfers under the GDPR. AirLST is hosted in Germany and TISAX-assessed (TISAX is the information security assessment standard of the automotive industry). Roles and permissions control who sees which guests.

What AirLST provides: an approval status that triggers the invitation, roles and permissions per team and subsidiary, a change log with name and timestamp, and consent records per guest. Details in the Trust Center.

  • Germany: Criminal Code (StGB), section 299, sections 331 et seq.
  • Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA)
  • UK Bribery Act 2010
  • GDPR, Articles 44 et seq.
€19,440Difference in the worked example

What proof of empty seats can be worth.

A German entity, 2,000 hospitality seats at €600 each, 18 percent of them verifiably unused.

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Assume a company in Germany provides 2,000 hospitality seats over a season at a cost of €600 per seat. Under the flat split for hospitality packages described above, 30 percent is the gift portion, taxed at a flat 30 percent. If 18 percent of the seats stay unused and that can be proven per seat, the tax base shrinks accordingly.

Worked example · 2,000 seats at €600
  • Total cost€1,200,000
  • Gift portion 30%€360,000
  • Flat tax 30%, all seats€108,000
  • 18% verifiably unused€88,560
Difference€19,440

A made-up example with disclosed assumptions, not customer data and not tax advice. Solidarity surcharge and church tax are not included. Whether and how the split applies in your case is for your tax department to decide.

This section is not tax or legal advice. It explains why documentation per guest is required and what AirLST provides for it. Rules differ by country; for events with guests from several countries, that is the rule, not the exception.

How are hospitality tickets different from event ticketing?

Hospitality tickets, often called VIP tickets, are personal admission tickets for selected guests of an event: sponsors, business partners, clients, guests of honor, press. Unlike open ticket sales, the seats are not sold but assigned, often as an allocation per partner, with a personal invitation, a ticket of their own and a staffed entrance.

The difference is not the technology of the ticket but the process before and after it. A hospitality ticket is tied to a person, not to a purchase. It belongs to a guest who has a plus-one, a seat, a contact person in your company and often a history with you. Corporate ticket management therefore has less to do with selling and more with organizing: invite, confirm, personalize, seat, check in, document.

A hospitality ticket is tied to a person, not to a purchase.

Why the invitation changes everything

Open ticketing starts with a purchase decision; hospitality starts with an invitation. Everything else follows from that: the guest does not become a customer but stays a guest; the ticket does not come from a box office but with the confirmation; the seat is not chosen but assigned; and at the entrance the guest is not processed but welcomed. The technical basis in AirLST is the same as in event ticketing: tamper-proof QR codes that are valid once only. The difference is the distribution: allocations per partner, internal approvals, personal delivery instead of anonymous sales.

What data does professional VIP guest management need?

A name and an email address are enough for a newsletter, not for a VIP guest. Professional VIP guest management keeps at least this per guest: the guest group and the allocation the seat comes from; invitation and RSVP status with timestamps; plus-ones with their own details; seat or area; dietary requirements and allergies; the contact person in your company; program items such as a reception, dinner or excursion; and a change log that records who changed what and when.

What matters is less the number of fields than where they live. If they sit in scattered spreadsheets, every change means reconciling and risk. If they sit on one record shared by invitation, ticket, seating chart and check-in, there is nothing to reconcile. The AirLST guest list is that record; custom fields add whatever your format needs. For returning guests, the event CRM keeps the history across events.

How do hospitality tickets and check-in work together?

The ticket is the key, the guest record is the lock. Every guest receives a unique QR code with their confirmation, as a PDF ticket, as a mobile wallet ticket and with a calendar file. At the entrance, the check-in app scans the code and reads not just “valid or not” but the guest behind it: guest group, plus-ones, seat, status. The check-in is saved on the record with time and station; every other station sees the same status.

Because ticket and guest list share one source, changes work without breaks: a replacement receives a code of their own, and the code of the guest who canceled is taken out of circulation. An extra plus-one is added to the main guest and checked in with them. A table change in the seating chart is visible at the entrance immediately, without reprinting. Roles and permissions control what the check-in team can see and change.

Which events is corporate hospitality software right for?

Anywhere some guests receive special treatment and mistakes would be visible. Typical formats are automotive hospitality with vehicle presentations and driving experiences, gala dinners and award ceremonies with seating and protocol, film premieres and media events with press and partner allocations, sports hospitality with suites and partner seats, and client and partner events where every invitation is a relationship.

How allocations are managed and distributed per sponsor is shown above under ticket allocations, sponsor management and VIP reporting.

FAQ

Corporate hospitality FAQ

What does corporate hospitality mean?
Corporate hospitality means a company hosting clients, partners, employees or officials at events, usually sports, culture or premieres, to build relationships. The seats often come from a sponsorship deal or a hospitality package: a suite, business seats, a paddock pass. Unlike ticket sales, the seats are not sold but given to named guests, which is why each one needs an owner, an approval and a record of whether it was used.

What is corporate ticket management?
Corporate ticket management is the process of distributing a company’s event tickets internally: who gets how many seats, who approves a guest, who receives which ticket and who actually showed up. In AirLST it runs on one guest list: allocations per market or team, approval before the invitation, a personal QR ticket per guest and check-in at the venue, all on the same guest record.

How do you split a ticket allocation across subsidiaries and markets?
Each unit gets its own allocation with a seat budget and an owner: market, subsidiary, distributor, department or partner. Guests are assigned to exactly one allocation, by import, registration or by the unit itself; returned seats go back into the pool, and replacements wait on the waitlist. Roles and permissions control who sees which list. The status per allocation lives in the allocation overview, not in an email thread.

Can you manage separate guest groups such as clients, press and sponsors?
Yes. Guest groups such as VIP, press, partner or sponsor each get their own allocations and their own registration flow. The guest list can be filtered by group, invitations and tickets go out to each group in the right form, and the check-in team sees the group on the guest record. Plus-ones are captured with the main guest and seated together in the seating chart.

What happens when a guest cancels at short notice?
The cancellation is entered once on the guest record and applies everywhere at the same moment: guest list, seating chart and check-in. A replacement from the waitlist receives a ticket of their own, and the canceled guest’s code is taken out of circulation. Every change is logged with a timestamp and the name of the person who made it.

How do you document hospitality for cross-charging, tax and compliance?
Finance needs four details per seat: recipient, receiving unit, value and attendance. In AirLST all four sit on the guest record: the allocation provides the unit, custom fields hold cost center and gift value, the approval is logged with name and time, and check-in confirms attendance. Export and REST API hand this to your ERP. AirLST is not a billing system; it provides the records your finance and compliance teams rely on. Details in the background section.
Events made easy

The hospitality experience starts with the invitation.

In 15 minutes we show you how allocations, approvals, tickets, check-in and per-seat records work together in AirLST, based on your format.

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