Mr. O'Donohoe

Meetings & Conventions

Using Technology to Effectively Shift Share for Online Groups and Meetings Management

By David O'Donohoe, Senior Vice President, Global Supplier Sales & Operations, StarCite

In the same way that Strategic Meetings Management and online technology transformed the buying process for corporate meetings and events during the past decade, a transformation is now taking place on the supplier side as we enter a new phase of online group lead management. Online group lead technology and processes have continued to mature while online channels have proliferated. Those sales managers who know how to utilize these resources to their utmost will be successful in shifting share from their competitors and increasing revenues.

Solving Hotels’ Spam Problem

Information overload is a problem for everyone these days – including hoteliers who are seeking more group business opportunities.

On one hand, the Internet has become a powerful marketing engine for hoteliers and their ability to promote their destinations and put their best foot forward, from amazing virtual technologies that provide meeting planners with life-like tours right from their desktop to social media that is extending critical personal connections online.

But with the evolution of online sourcing, the proliferation of online channels, and the ease with which meeting requests can be sent, hoteliers are encountering a “spam” problem. It is becoming incredibly difficult to prioritize the traffic from so many different sources and manage the most lucrative opportunities.

In addition, hotels still want to stay personally engaged with meeting planners to be able to connect and share offers and the personal value-ads that close the deal. No hotel chain or property wants stifle their best sales people by having them bogged down in data entry, email box clean-up or filling out fields on RFPs.

Haunted By Phantom Leads

Hotel sales staffs are having trouble discerning which leads deserve attention versus those that are from planners who are merely “kicking the tires.” Another problem for hotels is the proliferation of “phantom leads.”

Phantom leads often come from meeting planners engaged in exploratory comparison pricing. Even worse, in some cases independent meeting planning agencies flood online channels full of eRFPs for meetings business that they don’t actually represent, but only hope to win. These providers want to obtain prices from hotels and then – just possibly – go back to a prospective corporate client to nail down the business and actually book it.

What are the odds of a hotelier actually winning much, if any, of this phantom business? Slim to none. Yet hotels are dedicating staffers and salespeople to deal with the influx of leads, with little to show for it except the fact that they can churn through non-existent business opportunities faster.

Real Business vs. White Noise

Online channels should be about delivering quality opportunities to hotels where they have a chance of winning the business and quality content that enables planners to access full information about properties, reach the right contacts and engage in positive business communications to negotiate and address requirements.

Today’s hotel sales team must be savvy about evaluating the various online lead channels and creating the right strategy and mix that positions top sales representatives effectively and ensures that the most valuable RFPs are responded to first.

New tools are now available to make these decisions. For example, new integration tools can now be easily deployed (without having to involve programming or IT) which can route RFPs opportunities directly into your sales management system, allowing direct transfer of data and a unified view.

Another valuable tool is Business Intelligence. Premium group channels offer data analytics that can show you the actual RFP traffic that has been delivered to your market, the properties that those requests went to and information that can help you better position your property (We share some more on this in the following section.)

In addition, social media channels, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and i-meet (a social network dedicated to the meetings and event industry) can enable your teams to directly engage with meeting planners and maintain the personal connections that are needed to attract new prospects and maintain existing relationships.

A focus on real opportunity versus white noise is good for both sides of the equation. Corporate planners will get more thorough, efficient and timely responses to their proposals. Meanwhile, suppliers will know they have a legitimate shot at actually closing the meetings business that comes across the electronic transom.

Getting Smart about Business Intelligence

Using the right Business Intelligence tools is critical to driving a high-value, optimized meetings program for suppliers. You will want to be sure that the Business Intelligence tools you deploy can provide the necessary level of detail and information – enabling you to make the smartest, most strategic decisions about how to promote your property and utilize your resources.

Here is a list of key factors you should look for and consider when it comes to Business Intelligence:

• Network Participation – The ability to evaluate the results of your property based on its marketing participation level in a given channel versus the results of other participation levels in your market to make informed decisions about the level of participation that you need.

• RFP Trend Reporting – Information on all of the RFPs and Room Nights received each month versus last year and the current year to date. When you evaluate RFP counts, be sure to understand whether the RFPs are “unique” across the chain, brand or management company for the time period. In other words, if the same RFP meeting opportunity went to several different vendors within your chain or brand company, it should only count as one RFP because your brand only had one meeting opportunity that was possible. (This avoids the problem of generating misleading data that can overstate the amount of business a supplier is receiving.)

• Overall Response Trends – Detailed reports that outline whether your company responded to an RFP or declined to bid on the business. This will help you determine if certain properties or sales teams require additional staffing, training or other resources to respond to RFPs.

• Response Metrics – Reports that will show how long (in hours) it took your company to respond to an RFP. Many studies have shown that the first/fastest to respond typically wins the business. Monitoring these trends may provide great insight into why some of your brands or properties may be losing out on business opportunities.

• Competitive Market Report – The ability to compare how many RFPs your property received in your market versus the number of RFPs that your top five competitors received over a given time. Once you have this data, you can identify steps that your property may need to take – for example, if you have a branding problem or an image problem, or whether your property is getting its fair share of the total opportunities in the market.

With this kind of detailed information in hand, you will be able to accurately assess the value of the meetings business coming in through your online channel. You will have a clear understanding of how your sales force is responding to leads and a roadmap to make decisions that can improve your approach, leading to more sales and higher meetings revenue.

Optimizing Your Resources

Since its inception about a decade ago, the online channel for meetings has created a new way of doing business, and it is continuing to evolve. As a result, hoteliers who were once thrilled by the idea of eRFPs cascading toward their inboxes are taking a harder look at whether these requests represent – and can be converted into – actual revenues through effective lead management.

Here are a few of the key steps hoteliers can take to optimize your resources:

• Measure – Take a rigorous look at close rates on eRFPs currently.

• Ask Questions – Talk with online channel partners to understand where eRFPs are coming from, how many hotels on average receive each RFP, and how they can improve your close rate.

• Adjust – Make changes to their eRFP program with a core focus on raising your close rate.

The best way to deal with information overload in your everyday life is by getting organized and sorting out what matters from what doesn’t. The principles are the same in the meetings space. By focusing on quality lead sources, hoteliers can separate the good stuff (quality leads) from the white noise (phantom leads) – and win more meetings business as a result.

With more than 20 years of experience in the Hospitality and Meetings Industry, David O'Donohoe ensures supplier success in StarCite’s meetings marketplace. Mr. O'Donohoe leads the Global Supplier Market business unit and Corporate Sales for the Asia and Pacific Region. He is responsible for the continued growth of a greatly expanded global meetings marketplace that links buyers with more than 60,000 hotel properties and meeting suppliers in every key market around the world. Previously, Mr. O'Donohoe headed up Supplier Sales and Strategic Alliances for StarCite. Mr. O'Donohoe can be contacted at Extended Bio...

HotelExecutive.com retains the copyright to the articles published in the Hotel Business Review. Articles cannot be republished without prior written consent by HotelExecutive.com.