Ms. Scholar

Meetings & Conventions

Gain More Business with SMM Services

By Debi Scholar, President, The Scholar Consulting Group

FutureWatch 2011, the Meeting Professionals International’s State of the Industry report, stated that Strategic Meetings Management (SMM) is the #1 trend in the meetings industry this year. And rightly so, as thousands of organizations have benefitted from creating a Strategic Meetings Management Program (SMMP). Initiating an SMMP enables an organization to save millions of dollars, comply with regulatory requirements, gain productivity through efficiency, and reduce contractual risks.

Hoteliers who support their clients’ SMM initiatives win more group business and build stronger relationships, which may be the catalyst to be awarded preferred supplier status, the pedestal title that most hotels strive for. Not only do your SMM group clients want dates, rates, and space, but also data, service, and compliance. Organizations will move their meetings market share to your chains and properties as part of their SMM supply chain strategy if you offer these SMM services. Hotels that do not support their clients’ SMMP may lose group business. Yet, many hoteliers do not know what SMM is or what is expected of them.

Defined, Strategic Meetings Management provides direction for organizations to guide the strategy, operations, and tactical activities of meetings and events in order to improve business processes, quality, and return on investment, and reduce costs, risks, and inefficiencies. Simply, SMM is to meetings what Disney is to theme parks. SMM leaders expect hotels to offer high quality, consistent, flawless meetings for all business units in a controlled, compliance-driven environment with personalized attention that appears seamless to attendees, driven by the undercurrent of data consolidation.

When a hotelier asks an SMM leader, “What can I do to help you improve your SMMP?” the top 25 answers provided by your clients might sound challenging—and yet positive responses will increase your chances of being selected as a preferred group hotel:

1. Provide monthly or quarterly data and metrics for all of the organization’s meetings/events across all of your chains, brands, properties, and management companies;
2. Consider the organization’s transient volume when quoting meeting prices; use transient rates for group business when applicable;
3. Develop small-meetings packages that enable administrative assistants and other coordinators to book meetings with pre-determined prices and the organization’s contract terms;
4. Recognize that when you encourage meeting requesters to use your hotel website for booking meetings, it circumvents the organization’s requirement to funnel all requests through the meeting management technology system which initiates the end-to-end meeting management process;
5. Answer electronic RFPs (eRFPs) thoroughly and quickly;
6. Recognize that procurement principles may not allow for telephone negotiations or communication of the final property chosen;
7. Read and discuss the organization’s meeting policy with your team so that everyone understands the organization’s meeting policy compliance expectations;
8. Notify meeting leaders when an unauthorized contract signer requests a meeting; direct all meeting requests through the organization’s SMM process;
9. Agree to negotiate and use the organization’s master contract with scope of work documents that can be used across the hotel’s corporate and franchised properties; in lieu of the master contract, agree to the consistent use of addendums;
10. Provide a list of the negotiated savings values so that the sourcing professional may document all of the hard and soft savings, and cost avoidance;
11. Allow a version of your crisis management plan to be shared with the meeting planners;
12. Automate attendee management uploads and downloads into your hotel system to facilitate quick changes;
13. Allow for the use of the organization’s strategically selected audiovisual suppliers to provide services without surcharges;
14. Provide for hybrid meetings (virtual meeting options that complement the face-to-face meetings);
15. Notify the client of shared space opportunities so that the organization does not have two meetings in the same property over the same dates with duplicative resources;
16. Recognize and help organizations reduce their budgets and understand that they may have thresholds on category spend that cannot be surpassed (e.g., 30% maximum meeting spend on food and beverage);
17. Collaborate with clients on development of and agreement on key performance indicators and service level agreements;
18. Communicate ALL hotel charges during contract negotiation so that meeting planners are aware of charges for extension cords, surge protectors, lecterns, etc.
19. Provide detailed folios for all group spend;
20. Award loyalty points to organizations so that the points can be tracked and managed by the organization, not the planner;
21. Stop giving incentives to administrative assistants and other ad-hoc meeting planners when meeting planners cannot accept unethical gifts; understand and support corporate Standards of Business Conduct policies and work with your marketing organization to curb or eliminate direct to user incentive solicitations;
22. Accept meeting cards/P-cards without added surcharges;
23. Allow for flexibility throughout your chain as to where a penalty credit may be used;
24. Help the organization to “connect the dots” when multiple meeting planners from the same organization book meetings with your chain or hotel but you recognize that they do not know each other; be the educator and champion for the organization’s SMMP.
25. Recognize that the organization owns and pays for the meetings, not the sourcing company; help your meeting sourcing and planning company partners get on board with your client’s SMMP.

Data Requirements

SMM leaders fall into the data analysis abyss when hoteliers cannot provide comprehensive metrics for all meetings across all chains, brands, and properties. SMM leaders want data—lots of it.

They need to show managed spend vs. maverick spend. Maverick hotel spend, meeting expenses that are not routed through the meeting team or meeting supplier, percolates to the top of the organization’s spend analysis reports. SMM leaders take note of the hotels listed on the maverick spend list and often quibble as to why those properties accepted the outlier, rogue group business; the SMM leader’s mental notes may transpire into a decision to eliminate the hotel from future group business. SMM leaders want data such as how much spend does our organization have with your chain, brand, property and management company, who signs the contracts, and what properties are awarded the majority of the organization’s business? If a hotel wants more group business, then it needs to supply the SMM leaders with rich data horizontally across all brands and vertically into the individual guest folio expenses. And, SMM leaders expect hotels to adapt to the emerging technologies.

Technology supports the SMM organization strategy and enables its processes. Just as SMM leaders buy and use meeting management technology, they expect hotels to embrace the automation. Hotels that do not respond to eRFPs, provide comprehensive folios, automate uploads of guest data, and supply enterprise-wide reporting risk losing group business.

For a complex meeting, a meeting planner gathers all of the RFP email responses and creates an Excel spreadsheet to compare hotel costs—an activity that can take 4–6 hours. After implementing a meeting management technology, the same hotel cost comparison may take less than 30 minutes using an eRFP. When hotels fail to answer the eRFPs thoroughly, it causes inefficiency for the meeting planner. As such, some SMM leaders have decided to stop sending eRFPs to the unprepared hotels. Similarly, meeting planners complain when their attendee lists are manually input into the hotel systems, which may cause errors in spelling and in arrival and departure dates. As a result, SMM leaders may evaluate hotels, and preference may be given based on the hotel’s ability to automate uploads and downloads easily to facilitate frequent attendee changes.

Service Requirements

Organizations view their hotel spend as a whole category, not expenses that are separated between transient and group business. As such, SMM leaders expect that hoteliers will consider the combined spend when pricing their group business. In fact, if the hotel is already deemed a transient preferred property, there is a good chance that the SMM leader will encourage meeting requesters and planners to send eRFPs to use those preferred transient properties for group business. Often, it is the transient preferred properties that are awarded the organization’s small-meetings volume. Regardless of the meeting size, an SMM leader must ensure that the organization’s terms and conditions are included in the contract.

SMM leaders may use the organization’s master contracts to streamline negotiations and Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to evaluate the hotel’s consistency and quality. Sometimes, a master contract, with standard concessions, is negotiated and used for the most frequently attended hotels. Even though the most common concessions are pre-populated in the contract, sourcing professionals will negotiate additional discounts based on the meeting specifications. SMM leaders are creating these master contracts with the evergreen language, such as the legal terms and conditions, in the master agreement and the variable information, such as the business decisions for the meeting, in the exhibit or scope of work document. When hotels facilitate and expedite the creation and use of the master contract and scope of work, it may increase your group business exponentially. Meeting sourcing professionals want to use the properties where the contract negotiation cycle time is minimal.

The SLA is intended to measure whether the hotel meets certain agreed-to measurable criteria for the services that the hotel is contractually committed to provide to the organization. In an SMMP driven by supply chain procurement principles, it is becoming more common for SMM leaders to expect their group hotels to agree to SLAs. For example, quality-driven SLAs may require the hotel to produce error-free invoices or that all sleeping rooms are available on time and clean by the agreed-upon check-in time.

Compliance Requirements

There is nothing that deters an SMMP more than non-compliance to the meeting policy. A thorough meeting policy describes what constitutes a meeting, who can plan meetings, how to plan meetings, which suppliers may be used, how to source meetings, how loyalty points can be accrued, and the consequences of non-compliance to the policy. There is nothing more frustrating to an SMM leader than learning that a hotel sold a meeting to an administrative assistant who is unauthorized to sign the hotel contract, without negotiation, with poor terms and awarded her/him with some incentive to do so. Even though the SMM leader may be marketing the SMMP internally, maverick spenders seem to sprout and splurge.

A good hotel SMM partner will notify the SMM leader that a meeting has come in to their sales team, so that the sourcing professional can take control from that point forward. While it may seem counter-intuitive and easy revenue may be reduced, the hotel will endure long-term benefits by supporting the organization’s SMMP. Honoring and building relationships in this way will produce more business in the end. Even though the word “relationship” is not in the contract, the SMM leaders and sourcing professionals will be grateful and consider your hotel to be an active SMM partner.

Those hotel chains, management companies, and properties that take the initiative to understand and collaborate with organizations on SMM are viewed as solid contenders for inclusion in the organization’s program; many hotel chains are already onboard. SMM leaders are seeking a win/win partnership and hotels can earn more group business through their willingness to understand and support the data, service, and compliance requirements that are integral to an SMMP.

Debi Scholar, author of SMM: The Strategy Quick Reference Guide, advises clients on supply chain and expense management categories, including airlines, hotels, meetings, ground transportation, corporate card programs, and travel management companies. Before founding her own consultancy in 2010, Ms. Scholar was with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) for 13 years. In her last position there, she was Lead for consulting with clients on Travel and Entertainment Expenses. She also held positions as the Meetings and Group Travel Director, and eSupport and Training Director. Ms. Scholar can be contacted at 908-304-4954 or debi@debischolar.com Extended Bio...

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