The weekly micebook Departure Lounge newsletter is celebrating a rather big milestone this week – our 400th edition!
The first issue was sent on 6 June 2018, with the original focus being to provide destination and venue inspiration to drive traffic to the micebook hub – an online platform for event planners featuring destination guides and supplier spotlights and profiles.
Fast forward 8 years, and its evolved along with the wider company focus – micebook is now a fully-fledged media and events company that connects and empowers the global events community through our content, community groups and events.
So naturally, Departure Lounge has a much broader remit, developed during and post the Covid-19 pandemic.
While we still provide venue and destination inspiration through our Venue of the Week, Destination of the Month and regular hotel stories, we now aim to cover all the people moves, agency news, supplier updates, industry trends and new openings relevant to our growing micebook community.
To mark the anniversary, here’s the Departure Lounge journey in numbers so far…
8 years
400 issues
18,000+ newsletter subscribers
16 per cent average open rate
2,500+ articles published
1.1m+ words written
530 words – the average article length
29 articles published per month on average
18,541 most read story (see our top stories over the years here to find out what it was)
50+ stories covering event industry mergers and acquisitions
630 articles mention sustainability – 1 in every 3 articles
80+ destination pieces about London
255 articles mention Covid or the pandemic
144 stories covering the micebook Awards and winners
15 stories published in one single day on 28 May 2026
400 industry voices interviewed
100s of destinations explored
1000s of events, venues, hotels and experiences spotlighted
5,000+ cups of tea consumed
1 industry continuously reinventing itself