Insider: Groups and Meetings Online: The Next Frontier

By Pam Streeter, VP Distribution & Marketing, Interstate Hotels & Resorts

Ms. Pam Streeter

A look into the next two years reveals a more intensive shift of meeting and group planners looking for ways to streamline the process of researching and placing group business.  How will this impact the hospitality industry?  If adoption practices follow the way of the transient cycle, hoteliers are in for quite a ride.   

In order to look forward, we should take a moment and look back.  Over the last 10 years, how individuals booked travel has dramatically changed via the advent of the world-wide-web in its commercialized format giving consumers the ability to directly research their travel options without the need to talk to a travel agent or hotel reservation agent.  In 1995, hotel websites did not have booking engines and most hotels didn’t actually have websites.  In 1996, the Holiday Inn brand website launched the first hotel direct booking engine allowing individual travelers to research and confirm reservations at their hotels worldwide.  Shortly thereafter, all other companies followed suit.  It was during these early days that dire predictions of the death of the travel agency and global distribution systems (GDS) were abound.  In October 2005, J.D. Power & Associates stated that online hotel bookings account for 41% of total hotel revenue and yet TravelClick’s recently released data stating worldwide electronic hotel revenue from the Global Distribution Systems (GDS) increased 14.7 percent over the third quarter of 2005.  

So what does this mean for groups and meetings?  In an industry where groups and meetings make up at least 30 percent of total revenue, higher in some locations and hotels, the need to understand how this customer segment will interact in the online universal is crucial.  A review of the Overture Keyword Search tool revealed that in November alone over 1700 searches were completed with the simple phrase “Meeting Space” when combined with destinations the amount of research occurring online skyrockets into the millions.  What do the meeting planners want and how can the hotel industry respond has been a key topics at a number of recent industry conferences including the Hotel Electronic Distribution Network Association (HEDNA) held December 2006 in Sunny Isles, Florida. 

HEDNA also released a white paper in May 2006 entitled “Online Group and Meeting Planning” that reviews the perspectives of customer, supplier, distributor, attendee and destination along with industry challenges, the definition of a successful online group strategy and key players already entrenched in the field.  In my article “Groups and Meetings Online:  The Next Frontier” in this week’s Hotel Business Review, we will examine some of the current trends that are occurring as it relates to groups and meetings along with ways the industry should be addressing the key challenges in order to be successful.

Sincerely, 

Pam Streeter

VP Distribution & Marketing

Interstate Hotels & Resorts

703-387-3360

pam.streeter@ihrco.com