Ms. Streeter

Meetings & Conventions

Groups and Meetings Online: The Next Frontier

By Pam Streeter, Vice President Distribution and Marketing, Interstate Hotels & Resorts

A look into the next two years reveals a more intensive shift of meeting and group planners looking for ways to streamline and consolidate the process of researching and placing group business, a $300 billion global marketplace. By moving these processes to the online world, many corporations will consolidate their groups and meetings business under procurement departments allowing for the standardization of business practices.

How will this impact the hospitality industry? Tremendous change will be in hoteliers' future, yet as always the industry will adapt to the change and after a few bumps in the road will eventually wonder how they ever did business without meetings being booked online. We know this is true simply by looking at how the industry adapted to individual travelers moving their business online beginning in 1996 with the early adopters and becoming a mainstream method of making reservations in the last three years. Consider the fact that in October 2005, J.D. Power & Associates stated that 41% of total hotel revenue is coming from the Internet and that is just a mere 9 years after the first hotel direct reservation was booked online.

In order to understand obstacles and the need for industry standardization in moving the concept of booking meetings and groups online, we must examine the typical manual meetings process.

If you are not exhausted by the steps above, keep in mind that none of these conversations occur in a simple telephone call, typically a game of phone tag must occur and each conversation is usually held in a separate phone call.

With the typical manual meetings process described, it is understandable why corporations believe "that meetings and events are the last uncharted territory for procurement in a lot of corporations." It is also the reason that a panel of senior executives lead by Christine Duffy, CEO of Maritz Travel and MPI board chairwoman, asserted that procurement and the new regulatory business environment has changed how corporate America manages meetings.(1)

A deeper look into the process must include an understanding of the decision-making process from the hotel stand-point. The information that a hotel must analyze and process to complete a group booking includes:

To provide pricing to the meeting planner a hotel must first evaluate and weigh their pricing decision against each of the above factors. The issue with automating the decision process is that there is no standardized decision making process across all hotels or even across each individual piece of business within a hotel.

These issues are just the decision challenges; however, technology limitations also exist. Since there are no industry standards supporting the processing of group data and a lack of consistency across the board, expectations of both meeting planners and hotels vary greatly.

This is not to say that some automation of the group booking process has not already been automated. Approximately seven years ago, Starcite and Onvantage (then called Plansoft) created two of the more universally used RFP submission tools for the meeting planning community. These automated tools "help corporations save time and money by automating the planning and procurement of large and small meetings with unprecedented cost control and spend visibility" (2) Since these tools only help meeting planners identify potential locations and ease the communication process in requesting pricing, they have only managed to simplify the initial stage of meeting planning. As discussed in the 2006 HEDNA White Paper Series: Online Group and Meeting Planning, one of the larger topics is that of real-time availability and inventory management. While today group travel technology providers are focusing on interfaces and connections to the suppliers inventory to give customers more functionality for booking their trips, the legacy central reservation and some property management systems are limited in how they are able to process group bookings. Most of these legacy systems do not manage function space, audio visual or banquet information either. This means that until the group travel providers are able to interface with both the sales automation systems and the central reservation and property management systems, complete automation is not possible.

So how do we overcome the challenges and supply the hotels with the information they need to be successful; meeting planners with the information to make decisions; and ultimately the consumer with an enjoyable meeting experience? Collaboration. By having the industry working together through trade groups such as HEDNA (www.HEDNA.org), MPI (www.MPIWEB.org), and HSMAI (www.HSMAI.org) all constituents in the process can work together to develop basic industry standards through open dialogue of the needs of each group. In 2005, HEDNA announced that one of their initiatives in 2006 would be education on automation of the group booking process and created a subcommittee dedicated to the initiative. Ed Perry, director of ecommerce, WORLDHOTELS and Distribution Management- Group Subcommittee chair for HEDNA said, "We will work with traditional and non-traditional distribution partners, including third-party online booking engines. We envision a community that has integrated inventory and instant availability access from the supplier to allow end-consumer, travel agents and meeting planners to shop their properties on a 24/7 basis." The HSMAI Foundation and PhocusWright has co-branded a special report "Groups and Meetings: Market Opportunity Redefined" that will be released in early January. The report will illuminate the online behavior of consumers, planners and suppliers when planning and reserving group events and meetings; identify trends and opportunities of key sectors - small leisure gatherings, small corporate meetings and large meetings; and compare feature sets and integration capabilities of leading technology providers.

A 'perfect world' scenario that would result from the collaboration would be, as follows:

Getting to this 'perfect world' scenario will take time, patience and lot's of open dialogues. Brian Nichols, NBTA Hotel Committee Chair offered the best advise "there are a lot of distribution channels available today. It is important for the meetings technology providers to keep their channels open so they may be compatible to do business with anyone. They should not limit themselves."(3) Making the transition to booking groups and meeting online will only be limited by our own preconceived notions, let's not limit ourselves.

References

(1) Meetings Tech Providers Augment Offerings, Corrie Dosh, March 6, 2006 from the 2006 HEDNA White Paper Series: Online Group and Meeting Planning.
(2) Onvantage Website "About Company"
(3) HEDNA White Paper Series: Online Group and Meeting Planning.

Pam Streeter is the VP distribution & marketing for Interstate Hotels & Resorts. She uses e-commerce to develop revenue for direct to hotel business; manages relationships with third-party Web companies; and oversees Interstate’s GDS, marketing, and rate programs as well as all internet and email marketing. Streeter was named one of the Top 25 Extraordinary Minds in Hospitality & Travel Sales & Marketing. She serves as President of the HSMAI DC Chapter and is a board director for the HSMAI Foundation, HSMAI Americas Board, and the Hotel Electronic Distribution Network Association (HEDNA). Ms. Streeter can be contacted at 703-387-3360 or Pam.streeter@ihrco.com Extended Bio...

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