Mr. Pesik

Meetings & Conventions

The Secret to Attracting Meeting Business to Your Hotel

By Greg Pesik, President and CEO, Passkey International

The group events business is booming. In fact for hotels such as Fairmont, IHG and Hyatt, group events-everything from corporate events and trade shows to family weddings and reunions-are huge business. To be exact, they represent a $30 billion market that comprises up to 60% of their revenue. As I have stated in previous articles, technology today plays a big role in attracting meeting planners, securing their business and retaining them as long-term customers. In these articles I have looked at the specific types of technologies that hotels should be looking at-everything from collaborative online group management technologies, to Blackberry mobile phones and automated room list solutions. Now it's time to take a step back. What promise and possibilities do these technologies really allow the hotel to offer meeting planner looking to find a home for their next event?

The Positive Booking Experience

The amount of work that goes into executing a successful event cannot be underestimated. The list of "to do's" is extensive. You have the venue and event date selection. Then planners must work on indentifying the list of attendees, which includes key speakers, panelists and exhibitors. On top of this they are faced with other key event action items such as the agenda, the catering, the seating arrangements, the hotel reservations and much, MUCH more. In other words the planner's plate is full, so much so that as they strive tirelessly to keep all the balls in the air, they are desperately looking for relief. One area where many of their prayers are being answered revolves around the hotel booking experience.

Potentially one of the most time consuming and stressful aspects of any event is the hotel booking experience. Before technology entered into the picture, planners were forced to be very hands-on when it came to booking hotel rooms and making sure attendees were able to make their hotel reservations with relative ease. After all, a failure to make the process as seamless as possible would result in frustrated planners and attendees, and potentially lead to poor event turnout. The problem was that the more time planners spent monitoring the hotel booking processes, the less time they had to focus on the content of the event, and all the other "to-do's."

Today, meeting planners are able to offer guests a seamless and highly personalized online hotel booking experience that allows them to make all key arrangements (i.e. register for the event, reserve a hotel room, etc...) in a matter of minutes and without having to drag the planner into the process. Rather, with these technologies, planners now can easily keep track of the event hotel bookings and be assured that their attendees are making their hotel reservations within the contracted block, and make necessary adjustments with incredible ease.

Better yet, the arrangements can all be made online, with just a few simple clicks of the mouse. Once the attendees are in the system these solutions then alert the planner regarding the action of the attendees (i.e. person A has registered for the event and booked rooms at hotel X), giving them a real-time snap shot of what is going on at any given time. You heard me correctly, the system automatically alerts you. Planners do not have to go on a wild goose chase to get the answers they are looking for. Now planners are able to track who has signed up for an event, and how their block is materializing (i.e. are they running short of rooms, are there going to be any unused rooms that can be cut free to avoid any unnecessary costs, etc...) and more, all without having to commit valuable time to doing so.

This ability is essential for planners who wish to ensure a first-rate hotel booking experience for their attendees and mitigate attrition risks while being able to dedicate time to other event tasks such as securing event participants (speakers, panelists, etc...) and creating content for the event (i.e. the agenda, speaker and session overviews, etc...) all of which ultimately ensure that the event delivers value to those in attendance. After all what good is having a packed house when the event itself isn't delivering the attendees any insights and training that they can put to use down the road?

Enhancing the Guest Experience

In addition to a streamlined booking experience, many hotels are also looking to enhance the guests experience beyond the event itself. After all, getting attendees to commit several full days of their time to an event is a tall order, as you are asking them to leave behind both family and work. Today, solutions exist that help the hotel and the planner turn what might be a hectic three day conference into an extended weekend and ultimately one they would be willing to take part in again in the future.

So, how is this achieved? Let's say an attendee is making his or her reservation at their hotel for the company's upcoming user conference. When registering for the event and reserving a room (all done online of course!) the booking solution then presents additional hotel packages that might be of interest to the attendee during their stay. For example the hotel might offer a special vacation package, which gives attendees the chance to extend their stay over the weekend, bring in their family and ultimately turn what was solely a business trip into a vacation. Other examples might include upgraded room types, spa packages, golf outings or even special dinner suggestions at the hotel.

The big picture result here is that hotels and the solutions they use to execute an event are capable of extending the economic and service value of the event, and making an attendee's decision to attend a "no brainer." By opening the customer's eyes to other potential possibilities they are able to offer them a superior level of service while generating incremental revenue and making the meeting planner look like a "rock star." In short, they can create a win-win-win type of situation.

Keeping Personal Information Secure

In addition to enhancing the attendee experience and lightening the workload of planners, there are other important issues to take into account, namely security. Most people do not like to talk about it, but data--specifically credit card--security is a huge issue today for any business, and events are no exception. One false move and your event and hotel are making the front page, but for all the wrong reasons.

In terms of security, planners must ensure that once an attendee books their hotel and registers for the event their personal information including credit card details and other vital personal information remains secure. Take the room list process as an example. Under traditional models, planners would typically email or fax their room list information to the contracted hotel(s). The lists themselves contain all attendee information-their name and address, highly confidential credit card numbers and more. In today's current climate any document sent as an email attachment or as a fax, is inherently insecure and highly susceptible to falling into their wrong hands. It's not out of the realm of possibility for the hotel's computer system to be hacked and for attendee information to be compromised.

With data breaches serving as daily news headlines, meeting planners are looking to solutions that are PCI compliant and therefore capable of ensuring the protection of all vital information. Essentially these solutions let meeting planners upload their own hotel rooming lists anytime at a secure web location, where hotels can then import those lists directly into their own reservation systems. This process eliminates a great deal of manual labor and errors, while mitigating the security risk associated with exchanging rooming lists via email or fax. These solutions also provide hotels and planners significant time savings and abridged risk, while reducing reservation errors by more than 50 percent.

The recipe for bringing meetings to your hotels can come in many different forms. The key is realizing that as a hotel you need to not only give planners the tools they need to simplify and enhance the attendee experience-from check in to check out-you also need solutions that allow them to do so while freeing them up to focus on the vital details of the event and ultimately delivering value to all in attendance. By putting planners in a position to "wow" the attendee your hotel will quickly become a favorite spot for all planners looking to identify the location of their next event.

Greg Pesik is President and CEO of Passkey. He served as SVP of Transport, Travel, and Hospitality at Talus Solutions. Where he helped position the company as a leader in profit growth technologies. Greg has overseen a portfolio of hotels, passenger airlines, cruise lines, cargo, ocean shipping, rail, trucking, and rental cars. He was VP and Director of Business Development at Aeronomics, held lead positions for Andersen Consulting and KPMG Peat Marwick. Greg holds an MBA from the Johnson School at Cornell and a BS from the Cornell School of Hotel Administration. Mr. Pesik can be contacted at 617-237-8200 or gpesik@passkey.com Extended Bio...

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