April 2011 - The Black Hole of the Conference Market in the UK?

As soon as the Royal wedding was announced, the sound of holiday forms being filled in grew to a cacophony in every office across the land, as the realisation that with 2 bank holidays, Easter, and the Royal Wedding, by taking the correct 3 days off, these magically transform into 11 days off work. So for 2011, this has created an interesting phenomenon. While Easter always lowers business levels in London (April this year was the worst performing month by quite a distance, except for August), this combination of Bank Holidays and Easter, has given Conference planners, and the Venues themselves a bit of a headache when it comes to pricing, and forecasting for the month. The flipside of this is that March and May are looking like they could be pretty healthy as companies push their corporate events and meetings into these months to make sure they can maximise attendance. With the late announcement of the Royal Wedding (ie most of the pricing, strategy and budgets where already set for next year), will Venues in the UK go back and re-do their business plans and pricing for q1 and q2 2011? I think there may be a good opportunity to maximise revenue in March and May, as conference demand will most likely shift from April. Are you going to take advantage of this in 2011?

While I am on the subject of Bank Holidays - the movement of Easter every year almost always causes issues with forecasting for Hotels across all parts of their business - Will it fall in a "good" way or a "bad" way this year? Will business continue or grind to a halt as the slew of Bank Holidays takes hold? there is always a whiff of uncertainty around the planning of this part of the year.  For hoteliers and revenue management professionals in particular, putting Easter in a the same spot every year would provide a welcome respite from the uncertainty about that time of year, and enable stronger planning. This is pie in the sky thinking though - Easter will always move back and forth through March and April.

  Have any of your major conferences/events decided to change their dates as a result of the Royal Wedding? Will the royal Wedding provide a boost for wedding business as couples look to get married on the same day as the Royal Couple?  Is April the month to really try and get the business in from overseas where easter is not a big factor - for example the Russian market? Time to dust off the crystal ball once again!

An Existential Post - What does The Conference Bench Data actually mean, and how can I improve my RevPAS?

The really simple answer with regards to this is that you can see when you are gaining or falling behind  the market and against your direct competitor set – Simple!

Then these questions usually follow:

How can I use it to make strategic decisions about my business?

What can I get from your metrics that will tell me if I am yielding and pricing correctly?

We get asked these questions a lot here at The Conference Bench, so I thought I would post a few of the stock answers we give to our clients to help them interpret their data. I can see a lot in our clients data, and it nearly always provokes some interesting questions from me as an outsider. But the real key to using the data from The Conference  Bench, is to use it in conjunction with all of your internal measures, and data tracking.

One of the first questions I always ask is “have you been tracking your turndowns?” While this is a fairly basic part of life in a Conference & Events office (see my other post “The Importance of Turndowns”), some hotels and venues are still not doing this. A big piece of advice we give to hotels on a regular basis is the following:  When you turndown/lose a big piece of conference business worth a lot of revenue, and your turndown reason is “lost to main comp set – hotel X” the key thing to do here is to check the compset report over the period when that booking was supposed to be happening. Was the comp set affected?  Did the revenue increase by a big % compared to the same week last year?  And also – has that booking appeared on the readerboard of our comp set in the hotel we lost it to (it is always funny in meetings asking the “do you read your competitions reader board?” question; most always admit it sheepishly in the end!)?  From this you can see whether or not that booking was really worth turning down or losing on rate, especially if you know your competition in enough detail.

The other question we get a lot is “Are we Pricing correctly, and can we yield our space a bit more? Can you give us some guidance on our rates?” –

Looking at Conference Bench data does not give instant feedback on the rates being given as we collect total revenue. So as a rule of thumb, we always focus on the RevPAS and % share of revenue in the market/comp set to begin with before going a bit deeper with the other metrics.  The first thing to look at with regards to pricing is the Daily Averages – Which days of the week are you stronger and which are weaker?  Are you dynamically pricing the weaker days of the week?  Or perhaps even looking at ways to target poor corporate days such as Friday with Social business – Weddings etc? More often than not, we see great variation on the day of week performance, where a lot of venues are not dynamically pricing or there is less focus on the weaker shoulder days.  The key to finding out if you are yielding is to first check the occupancy against the comp set and market – if your venue is on a level par in occupancy with the comp set or market, then it is time to Check the RevPOS and RevPD data. If you are ahead on these two it shows you are yielding well in the market place. If however you are low on occupancy in comparison to the comp set, your RevPOS and potentially the RevPD could be artificially inflated so it is very important to look at these when your occupancy is on the level with the comp set. 

 Only the other day I was doing some analysis on one of our stronger hotels in the market – they are well ahead in Occupancy – 50% on some  days. I would normally expect their RevPOS and RevPD to be lower than the comp set (ie you are dividing the revenue by more square metres and delegates when you are busier than the market), but this hotel has such strong performance and good process in place that they still outperform the market in RevPOS and RevPD significantly. So they are therefore yielding strongly in the market.

With regards to the % share of the revenue, we find that a lot of our top performing hotels are regularly taking more than their fair share of revenue. Ie one of our top performing hotels has only 4% of the space in the market, but is regularly taking 8 – 12% of the total revenue. Outperforming your share is a very good measure of success in the meetings market. There is an exception to this – if your hotel has a very large square meter value – very Large venues (4000 sq meter and upwards) can still perform very well, but typically do not match their share of the space in revenue terms. In these cases it is sometimes more worthwhile comparing their own RevPOS performance to the RevPAS performance of the comp set or market as it gives a fairer comparison.

Also – this question comes up quite a lot: “how can we tell when the larger meeting rooms are occupied in the comp set from your data? “ We track Occupancy in Square meters, and also in Occupancy of Meeting Rooms. So as an example – if you have 10 meeting rooms and 2 are occupied, your occupancy of meeting rooms will stand at 20%. If these two rooms happen to be your Ballroom, and the rest of your rooms are smaller – your occupancy of Square meters is likely to be around the 50% mark depending on the rest of your space. so when looking at the compset and market data, it is fairly obvious when the bigger rooms are occupied. depending on the market, (some markets have more ballroom space than others) a difference of around 20 - 30 percentage points between the occupancy of Meeting rooms, and the Occupancy of Square Meters. 

Hopefully the above has given a little insight into how we can help you get some better results in your conference space by using The Conference Bench data proactively. These are just a few of the ways we help venues. Please get in touch if you would like to know more!

New Conference Bench Training Offer: 10th December @ the QEII

The Conference Bench is pleased to promote Revenue By Design's
 A Revenue Management Workshop for The Meetings and Events Industry :

Revenue by Design are running a one day Revenue Management workshop at the QEII on December 10^th designed for delegates from Venues in London and the South East. This practical workshop aims to equip all the attendees with knowledge of the principles of Revenue Management. Each delegate will get the opportunity to identify their property’s key selling points, assess the competition, correctly position themselves in the market and recognise the best channels to enhance. Coaching is given on how to understand, analyse and forecast demand, thereby creating opportunities to maximize revenues. The cost is £295 + VAT per delegate, to book a place or find out more information,

please contact  jane@revenuebydesign.co.uk or call Jane on 07773 362770.

I will be there with a review of the London Market. Look forward to seeing you all there!

Middle East Market Data, RevPAS and Occupancy - October 2010.

Please find below our Middle Eastern Market Data for October - We see all three markets here come back strongly in October, with all three sitting at very similar occupancy. An interesting spike here is for Doha in September -outperforming the other 2 markets significantly. Please Click each image to Enlarge!

Dubai - Year to Year Update; RevPAS & Occupancy Comparison for October.

James is back with some more year to year data to share with you all; We now have a grand total of 17 participating hotels in Dubai that complete The Conference Bench, so we are very excited to see how this dynamic, vibrant market is doing year to year..  

In a market where new supply seems to be never-ending, the good news is that the market for October has been fairly stable:

RevPAS - Down by only -6.28% to AED 23.10  per available Square Meter. Interestingly this is markedly split between the midweek and the weekend:

Midweek - Down by - 9.56% to AED 25.08
Weekend - Up by +10.67% to AED 18.95

Occupancy - up by 4.88% overall, and this was the big driver of the increase in weekend Revenue in the city:

Midweek - Up by + 1.19% to 55.10%
Weekend - Up by a whopping +20.34% to 38.48%!

What is driving this big increase in weekend business in the market? I will do some investigation and post back here!

In a market that has so much meeting space,and competition is so fierce, it is heartening to see Dubai hold steady year to year for a particularly busy month - especially seeing a strong weekend business increase. Lets hope this can be turned into small growth as the next two months roll in!

As ever - let us know if you have any questions, or would like some more detailed data!

Short Lead Conference Bookings - The Pricing Dilemma

The Conference Season is in full swing; budget for the month has been exceeded by a whopping 20%, the diary is looking nice and packed, and the operations team is firing on all cylinders to make sure all of your clients are leaving your venue satisfied. A quick glance at the diary shows green definite bookings for the next three months with a few gaps here and there to be filled.

So how can you maximise your revenue even more during the busy Conference Season?  One of the current trends we see in the Conference Sector is the decreasing lead times - in fact it seems that the value of bookings has gone up by the same proportion as the lead times have gone down! 3-4 years ago, events worth £10k upwards always booked at least a month or more out - not anymore, these bookings come into the markets 3-4 weeks out, and sometimes even closer in. Just the other day I was talking to a venue that confirmed a piece of business recently for £18k just 5 days out! This combination of factors has made it incredibly hard for Conference Leaders to budget and forecast.

One of the selling strategies we see for short-lead bookings is to free-sell the remaining unsold space, and discount hard to get the business in - after all, Conference business is an intangible product. So when the budget has been smashed for the month, why not put the unsold space on freesell, but at rack rate for DDR and Room Hire? It is a high demand period, the budget has already been achieved - what have you got to lose? The bookings that do confirm will be at a high rate, and the ones that don't confirm will hopefully drop out quickly. There is a slight risk that selling at rack may annoy the agents who want to show a saving to their clients, but why not give it a try? This change in strategy is especially appealing as the volume of short lead bookings continues to increase - why not give it a shot?

What do you think? Have you tried the above with success, or did it fall flat? Drop us a line in the comments!

London Year to Year RevPAS growth for September - Green Shoots MKII?

The results are in for London! We now have 9 hotels that have year to year data in London, and as Conference Season ramps up into full swing, I thought it would be interesting to share how these 9 hotels did in the first proper month back after the summer holidays:

RevPAS - Up 9.59% overall to £14.76 ( Interestingly up 17.78% during the midweek, and down -22.15% at the weekend)

RevPOS - Up 21.06% overall to £29.67

RevPD - Up 10% overall to £92.40

Occupancy M2  - Down 9.27% overall  to 49.76%

Occupancy Meeting Rooms - Down -2.56% to 47.35%

It is great to see that even though business levels are down slightly (a 10% decline in occupancy of M2) - revenue growth is up 10%!

For your interest the total Conference revenue Generated by these 9 hotels in the month of September is a little over £5million! Roll on The Conference Season - lets see how October and November do - will they confirm the resurgence of The London Conference Market?  for more info on sample size etc, please comment below, or e-mail info@jwbench.com

Russia & CIS Conference. 24th - 28th October Moscow.

James will be attending the above Conference next week in Moscow. Please e-mail james.parsons@jwbench if you would like to set up a meeting. Looking forward to meeting our lovely Russian Clients!

London Data January - September 2010, and Daily Averages!

PLEASE CLICK ON A GRAPH TO ENLARGE:

Here is some of our London Data for January - September 2010. As you can see The Conference market is coming back strong after the summer break in London, although i was slightly surprised to see September under perform June.

Watch this space for some London Year to Year data soon! Please contact us if you would like any more information: info@jwbench.com

European Results January - August 2010....

PLEASE CLICK ON A GRAPH TO ENLARGE.  

The above data is pulled from a consistent sample of hotels from all of our European cities. London, Frankfurt & Moscow are the consistent performers YTD, and the biggest variation comes from Easter in London, and Summer in Stockholm, although August is a particularly poor month all round. Please contact us if you would like some more in depth information about our data, or leave us a comment below. Watch out for more market data coming up in the next few weeks from our other destinations!

£100 million YTD for Conference Revenue? you must be JOKING!

So here at The Conference Bench we have been doing quite a bit of year to date data analysis of late, and we wanted to share some of our results with you, as the data has been pretty staggering:

January 2010 - August 2010 

Total Revenue:

London:                       £40,726, 201 (15 hotels)

Dubai:                   AED 174,754,126 (24 hotels)  (approx £30,444,970)

Abu Dhabi:            AED 103,292,997 (10 hotels) (approx £17,995,296)

Now, bearing in mind these totals are for just a small sample of venues in each of our cities, you begin to wonder how much money is actually out there for companies and private individuals to spend on Conference and Events! I mean the total for these three cities will be well over £100million come the end of September, between 50 hotels, and we have the busiest conference season yet to come, in October, November and December!  I will be very interested to see the year end results for our expanded samples in all of our markets. 

We do come across a few hotel companies that are yet to take their conference figures seriously... surely figures like the above will get them to sit up and take notice of how their space is performing?  Are they grabbing any significant part of this massive multinational business?

As an aside the occupancy for the above markets is as follows:

London:       38.60%

Dubai:          38.91%

Abu Dhabi:  42.53%

These occupancy figures may seem to be fairly low to the eye that is accustomed to reading bedroom occupancies in the 80's and 90 percentage bracket. However the top performing hotels in the Conference Bench average between 50 - 70% occupancy. Just imagine if these markets could eke another 10 - 12 % in occupancy, the difference to the Revenue would be intriguing to say the least.

What do you think?  Are you grabbing your fair share of this massive amount of revenue? 

Does Brand and Star Rating make a difference to Revenue Share?

Typically in our statistics, the % share of the revenue is quite often equal to the % share of the space, which is fairly logical. So if the hotel has 30% of the space in the comp set, it very often captures 30% of the total revenue from the comp set, and the same goes for the market share as well.

However we have seen that the above theory is not applicable to everyone so we decided to do a study on the top performing hotels in each of our destinations, to try and find out what it is that is driving such strong performance. Taking the top performing hotel in 7 of our cities the first thing we noticed very quickly is that they where nearly all branded, and where all 5 star rated. Looking a bit closer we also found that they all share very similar prime locations in their destinations as well. 

Furthermore we can see that capturing more revenue than their fair share of space is a common occurrence for these hotels. In fact they are capturing a lot more than expected. Most of them are achieving 50% more revenue than their share (i.e.: when their Share of the space is at 20%, regularly taking 30% of the market revenue). In fact some even reach 3 times their share in some locations (i.e.: share of 5% of the space taking 15% of the market revenue).

For the 7 hotels we looked at, on average they have 12.58% of the space in their respective markets, and take 20.54% of the revenue!  This is an increase over their fair share of the space of 63% or 7.96 percentage points!

So is this a case of the Brand Beats all?  Well out of the top 7 performing hotels we looked at, it is an independent 5* property that beats them all. How do they do it?  From an outsiders point of view there are seem to be several reasons: the location, loyal customer base of repeat business, the type of rooms, the availability, and the overall strategy. Those factors combined make it especially hard to beat this hotel in its market place, especially as it beats out the closet performing hotel in the rest of the top 7 by 130%!

Can you guess which of our hotels is winning the global battle for The Conference Bench Revenue Share Crown in 2010 YTD?  Comment below!

Article written by Gabriel Felissent.

This Blog: 1. Chain Hotel Website: 0.

A little while back I posted a blog about Hotel chain websites, and how they can be useless when it comes to properly explaining the conference and banqueting aspects of a hotel or property. You can see the blogpost here.

Then last Friday, I received a lovely e-mail from one of  our participating chain hotels. The hotel itself shall remain anonymous, but it is safe to say that the chain head office was questioning their need for an additional website to the poor cookie cutter version that appears on their brand’s site.

To quote directly:

“Of course it goes without saying that I was able to argue that the site had paid for itself inside its lifetime and had generated in excess of £x.xm worth of enquiries in it's first 12 months.  However, even in the face of such weighty empirical evidence it seems to have been your humble blog that has finally beaten them into retreat so for that I'm eternally grateful!”

This is great news for the participating hotel – they get to keep their bespoke website (which is most definitely designed to sell conference, and works very well indeed), and our blog post is vindicated! 

Got any success stories to share from your own website? Or are you wrangling with head office over how best to present your meetings and event offering? Comment below!

New Supply in London

There is a clutch of new  and exciting hotels opening in the next 2 years in the lead up to the Olympics, as highlighted nicely in The Australian here.

As a lot of hotels are right slap bang in the middle of their business planning, our London Hotels will surely be taking this new supply into account. A 1000 new rooms will make a difference to bedroom business, especially in the 5* sector where most of this new supply is coming in.

But a good question to ask is this: will these hotels have meeting space? And how will it affect the market?

We have now been collecting occupancy data since June last year. The total to the end of July for all of our London Hotels is 42% in meters square and 38% in occupancy of meeting rooms. Any seriously big new supply could have quite a dramatic effect on this.

Out of all of these hotels mentioned in the article, The Savoy has the biggest meeting space, and the rumoured “a la carte” banqueting for 300 + people certainly has got some of our London hotels thinking about their current banquet offering.

But what of the other properties coming into the market? From some quick research, a interesting competitor to the Savoy will be the new Corinthia Hotel.  As you will see from the site, this hotel will occupy a nice neat space by the River Thames, not too far from The Savoy. The meeting space in this hotel will not be a true competitor for the Savoy – the total area on plan is only 600 square metres at present, but it is an addition to the phalanx of luxury London hotels with meeting space.                

The last big entrant to the market to make a big splash in the conference market was the Westminster Bridge Park Plaza: With over 1000 bedrooms, and 2000 square meters of meeting space, this really shook up the meetings and events market in the city. For the established big events hotels, it added a new competitor with the number of bedrooms to really capture those great big group bookings that can be so lucrative.

An exciting time in The London Market without a doubt. 

July 2010 Data - Better Late than Never!

Due to a lot of clients being on holiday we bring you the July data a little later than we had hoped!

(Please click picture to enlarge)
Please find above the total Revenue Per Available Square Meter (RevPAS), by daily average and Revenue Per Delegate (RPD), and detailed Occupancy for the month for our Maturing Destinations. Please leave us a comment if you would like more information.

Green Shoots?

We have some more year to year data to share with you. The Month of July is a very quiet month in nearly all of our markets, so it is with great pleasure that we are able to publish growth in all three of our Year to Year Markets in Revenue:


London (based on 7, 5* properties)     +28%!
Dubai (based on 17 properties)           +9.69% 
Stockholm (based on 20 properties)  +6.51% 

As you can see the 7 London hotels continue to post impressive revenue gains on last year following on from June's 25% increase. Once the sample has grown and more hotels are included, it will be fascinating to see if the London Market is really recovering or not. The other question is this - How bad was 2009?  Is this why the year to year data is showing such big increases in London?

It is such a shame that hotels are not able to give us better year to year data - we will continue to collect it, and in turn that will provide us with better trend data.

Look out for July data soon for all of our markets! What do you think?  Do you feel there is more business coming through to your markets?  comment below!

Inside The Conference Bench

I thought it might be a good idea give you an insight into something we are working on here at The Conference Bench.

One of the next pieces of development we are going to do is the incorporation of Rooms attached to conference, and/or group rooms. The idea of this to start with is to show exactly how much money your conference space is generating for the business - in both Food, Beverage & Room Hire, and the group bedroom revenue that is attached to these bookings. The second outcome of collecting this data is that we will very quickly be able to show group trend for a city, in average group rate, and average group occupancy, and this is the bit that really excites me. What is the average group bedroom rate across all of our markets? How different is the rate between London, Dubai, and Moscow?  When is the peak group room rate achieved in Frankfurt? During Imex?  November or December in London? With the transient business shrinking, and group ceiling's at an all time high will this be shown in the year to year reports?  I am very excited about seeing this in conjunction with our existing reports. For those that know me, they see how excited I can get about our reporting!

In terms of the process:  to start with, we ask all of our major client contacts for feedback regarding the next piece of development. We ask them the relevant questions - what is the process for your hotel/group/chain? How are the hotels measured internally? Are the hotels targeted on these figures? How would you like the results to be presented in the reporting?

With every piece of the development we do there is always nearly always a hard decision to be made. In the piece described above, we are torn between the following:

Do we track bedrooms attached to conference only; to give the true value of conference business?
or
Do we track all group bookings over 10 rooms including conference bedroom bookings; to give the "true" group rate & occupancy figures for the markets and comp sets?
or
Do we track both separately and risk having too much input?

Sometimes we are lucky, and the process and practice undertaken by the big groups and chains will dictate the way we decide to go - this is certainly true of our Data Guidelines, which where heavily influenced by Starwood, Hilton, Marriott and IHG. I think we went through 30 versions before coming to the one all of our hotels use today!

One of the key things we always tell our clients, and is absolutely paramount when doing the development is the mantra we have had from the start:

Simple, easy to use input (so all hotels can take part) which is matched with useful, informative output.

We have found that as soon as you make the input too complex, and it is not an easy task for hotels to complete, the hotels soon drop out.

What do you think?  What would you like to see with regards to bedrooms attached to Conference & Events?

While you are on the site, we have a little poll going on on the left hand side of the Blog at the top. Have a look, and see what you think!  Please add your vote! YOUR occupancy measure depends on it!

New Destination - Berlin

We are delighted to announce the full arrival of Berlin as a destination here at The Conference Bench - with 9 hotels participating to begin with, we hope to add more hotels in the coming weeks, and after the summer holiday period is over! Look out for our next data announcement -  Berlin will be included, and it will be very interesting to see how it stacks up in comparison to our other European destinations. Watch this space!

Happy Birthday to US! Year to Year DATA, and a very big Thank YOU!

7 of our London hotels, 7 in Stockholm, and 11 in Dubai had their first Conference Bench Birthday in June.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of the hotels that have supported us, given excellent feedback, and most importantly for being essential in getting The Conference Bench up and running.

While June is quiet in both Scandinavia and the Middle East, our 7 London (mostly 5*) properties posted a massive 24.64% increase in revenue over the previous year!  This was driven across the board by occupancy, and from the look of the figures, an increase in the sale of smaller meeting rooms. Occupancy in Square meters was up by 19.83% year to year, and occupancy of meeting rooms up by 25.60% year to year!

Interestingly, even though the revenue was up, the Revenue Per Delegate only rose by 8 pence, showing that although there was more business in the market, hotels have not been able to yield any better than they did last year. It did not get any worse, which is great news in the current climate.

We are very excited about getting to this milestone in our 3 markets - the year to year data should provide a very interesting analysis point in addition to the tools we already have in place.

We are still very keen to get more of this data from hotels - from the look of the way the figures are turning out, it could be very useful indeed. Especially as the coming months - September, October, November and December are the strongest performing months in nearly all of the markets. The data should begin to highlight  whether the conference & events sector is actually coming out of recession, or still suffering.

Keep your eyes peeled for some more Data soon, and drop us a line in the comments or to info@jwbench.com if you have any questions.

(Please click picture to enlarge)
Please find above the total Revenue Per Available Square Meter (RevPAS), by daily average and Revenue Per Delegate (RPD), and detailed Occupancy for the month for our Maturing Destinations. Please leave us a comment if you would like more information.

Do Points really mean Prizes? Or better still, do points mean Conference Revenue?

Hilton Honours, Priority Club, Marriott Rewards, StarPoints, A/CLUB  points, Goldpoints Plus, Voila – just a few of the hotel rewards out there.

This is a subject that has always intrigued us here at The Conference Bench. The above programs work exceptionally well for rooms, rewarding repeat customers for their loyalty to their chosen brand or hotel chain, with points available for every £ or € spent on property. While working for Marriott I recall a great number of Marriott Rewards Millionaires passing through the doors of the Renaissance Chancery Court, with tales of spending upwards of 250 nights a year in Marriott properties ( get a life!!), upgrades, and generally being treated like royalty when in a  Marriott property.  I was also tasked with signing up Marriott Rewards members, as are nearly every front desk staff  member at all of the above hotel chains.

This is obviously a very powerful marketing tool – the numbers are insane– Marriott Rewards members number over 21 million from a cursory scan of google, and the other major chains are probably around the same number or in the case of IHG, 37 million members!!!!!

What we cannot understand is why hotel companies have not been able to harness this great marketing tool to power up their meetings and events revenue. In the UK a lot of the bookings are done by Conference Agents, who by the nature of their agreement with the hotels are not allowed to take points for placing bookings, so for the most part, those bookings can be excluded, although some of them do offer reward points to the guest once they are in the hotel. This “double dipping” always used to irk me somewhat, as not only is the hotel paying commission to the Conference Agent, they are also parting with rewards points for the organiser, even though they had very little say in choosing the property. Part of me thinks that hotels do not want to reward big conference and events business.

 As an example – IHG cap conference and events at 60,000 points per event (3 points per £ spent), and Hilton cap theirs at 100,000 points (1 Hilton Honors point per £ spent) The average points cost of staying in a hotel is  around 25,000 for IHG and 30,000 points for Hilton.    So with Hilton, the absolute maximum you are giving away is 3.5 free nights in a hotel for a £100,000 booking in Honors points?  What kind of a reward is that?!? – ok you can stay in a Hilton category 1 hotel for 7500 points, but something tells me they may not be the best/centrally located properties out there! The same is true of IHG, although a little better.. you only need to spend £20,000 to get three free nights with points!

Bearing in mind the actual cost of these stays that is reimbursed to the property by head office is around $60 US dollars per room per night (according to my anonymous source within IHG), you begin to see my point that they are not too keen on awarding big points for meeting and events!

One of the trends we come across a lot is that meetings are Seasonal and destination led – ie big meetings go from one destination city to the next and therefore demand is very difficult to track accurately. The above is true to an extent, and a good way of harnessing this marketing power for the big groups and chains would be to hook some of these annual/bi annual destination movers with the promise of rewards for loyalty – ie have it in a Hilton Hotel wherever you may be every year/six months, and we will reward you for bringing the business to us. Do it for five years on the trot and on the fifth year we will give every attendee 100,000 points each, and the major buyer 1,000,000!  Surely this would be a sure fire win for the client as well as the hotel chain – a nice booking that is worth a huge amount of revenue that repeats every year, or every six months, (be it in a different hotel or region) and the organiser/buyer is happy as they can build a hotel with all the reward points they have accumulated!  While in theory this is a win win, and seemingly very simple to do, in practice it would require a hell of a lot of cooperation between hotels, and the conference offices of each, as well as between regions, and all the politics that goes with along with that.   This is something that could be done with smaller, repeat training bookings that occur monthly within your hotel, but occasionally go and try the competition – what a lovely way to keep those base bookings that keep the department ticking over month after month with a relatively low cost reward – certainly costs less than agency commission!  Or come to think of it, another way of convincing guests to book directly with you – book with us and get the rewards directly.

Or is it a case of poor education?  From my experience, direct clients were rarely, if ever, told how many reward points they might earn from booking a meeting or event within a hotel! Is this a way to differentiate yourself from the pack?  Offer up the rewards during the booking process to add a little extra spice for the client to book directly. Granted they might ask for points from the other hotels they are getting quotes from, but this would certainly make the proposition a bit more rosy if up against what the client may view as a poorer reward scheme/no reward scheme.

The other question is of oversaturation. Do our clients have a wallet stuffed with every reward point card imaginable?  In this case is there a better alternative that has not been tried before? Yes, we are talking cold, hard, cash! Would it be better to offer the direct customers some lower lever of commission?  Say 3% for booking direct? 

 How are you using the massive marketing muscle of your group or chain that is the reward scheme?  Are you using it proactively?  We may be wide of the mark with the above blog post – if so, put us right in the comments!

Friday Tales – C & B; Conference & Banqueting, or Chaos & Bedlam?

Hotels see all walks of life, and all types of strange behaviour - they seem to be a hotbed of outrageous behaviour, from hotel guests and hotel employees alike! My friends always ask me if Hotel Babylon (the book) is true - I alwasy answer that the reality is that they are worse!

Whereas the rooms division get all sorts of nice surprises from guests on a daily basis, Conference & Banqueting is a place where even more mysterious goings on occur, as I am sure your operations team will attest to! In one year of working in banqueting I witnessed the following crazy situations:

A very expensive wedding for 400 people completed by a solid silver throne worth £20,000 for the couple to sit on during the ceremony. Not only did they have this ornate throne, but they also had a bald eagle and a sparrow hawk in the room to deliver the rings!  I got the shock of my life coming on shift and walking into one of the storerooms to be confronted by the 4 foot bald eagle sitting in its cage on top of a stack of tables!

Xmas Parties – at one big accountancy firms xmas party, I witnessed a behaving extremely inappropriately on a chair in the  middle of the ballroom – I could hardly believe my eyes! It was right at the end of the night, and the room was fairly dark, and they had decided to go for it! What on earth do you do/say in a situation like that?

At another Xmas party – a girl dancing barefoot got a 5 cm piece of glass wedged into the bottom of her foot. She was so drunk she did not even notice, and put bloody footprints all over the dance floor, the carpet, into the lobby and into the restrooms. We eventually called her an ambulance, but she did not want to leave!

An Iranian New Years Eve Party was in full swing with approximately 200 guests in the ballroom.  The music was quite loud, and the party just getting into full swing, when a drunk, jet lagged American guest came stumbling, bleary eyed into the ballroom, and proceeded to jump on the stage, grab the microphone and start spewing obscenities about his lack of sleep in a loud drawling American accent. Safe to say this did not go down too well with the Iranian guests!

At one of the hotels I worked in, the rest rooms were situated on the other side of the lobby to the bar. So when bar patrons where particularly drunk they could not find them, and would often wander into the emergency exit behind the bar – I caught more than 2 people peeing against the wall in this exit!

These are just a few of the crazy things that went on in my hotel life, which I sorely miss. Have you got any tales from the C & B department of your hotel?  Add into the comments below! Anonymously if needs be!

Conference Team Incentives & Office Practice

The Conference Office. So many different ways of working, but which is the best?  Depending on the type of property you are working in, this office has many guises; Event Management, Reactive Phone Sales, Wedding Planner, Social Function Managers, Proactive Conference & Groups Manager, the list goes on and on...  We come across many different ways of dividing responsibility between these different roles.  Do your reactive sales team do show rounds, or is that left to Sales?  Are the reactive team there just to take the calls and get the contract signed before handing over to the event manager who is responsible for up selling of technology and other extras? Does the Director of Event Management work with the Director of Revenue to construct a coherent battle plan for groups &  meetings with bedrooms?  Are you fighting with the rooms division to get bedrooms for a specific function?  Are weddings shared amongst the team, or are they looked after by a double act?  One person to proactively sell this segment, and another to look after the parade of “Bridezillas”  that arrive in the hotel, and have to have their every whim catered for from 6 months out to the morning after the night before?  Time consuming for a relatively small amount of revenue – depending on the client of course!  But a small price to pay for filling your space every Friday, Saturday and Sunday with weddings!

Once you have got your department sorted, and working like a well oiled machine, the biggest question is – How do we incentivise all of these staff in such different roles? For those hotels that have a significant amount of space, which drives some business, but is not the major focus of the hotel (rooms nearly always being the focus!)  putting these incentives in place can be a very difficult  sell to the GM, and the justification can take a lot of time to be proven. Especially as some of these measures will take at least 3 months to realise their potential, which is the same with most sales functions of the hotels.

We looked at the importance of turndowns in a previous blog post (click HERE for the link), and from our perspective one of the most important factors in getting these incentives set up is to make sure your own data is up to scratch, and as accurate as it can be. After all, would you want to be  judged on your own performance with bad data?  Putting in place a good incentive which relies on accurate data  can also provide a welcome boost to the poor data integrity in your systems as well  - “I am being measured on the success of upselling this meeting – If I don’t add the revenue correctly under the correct code, it won’t count in my revenue total”. One of the main goals here at The Conference Bench is to automate the upload of data from hotels to the system, but data integrity within systems at times is so poor, hotels will not even consider it, leaving the finance team to provide the high integrity data that is required to take part.    We are still constantly surprised that Conference & Banqueting reporting still lags so far behind the exact science of bedrooms reporting.

So what can be measured once you have all of your data systems in place, and  you are recording your Conference Office’s every £ of revenue and the activity that surrounds it?

Conversion rates – one for direct bookings and one for agency bookings? Are you even tracking the call volume that is coming in to your office for MICE business?

Revenue Targets– are these, monthly, quarterly, annually, or all of the above?  Do you have an up selling target? Are group rooms included in the target?

Customer Satisfaction – Test calls?  Are your reactive team asking the right questions to capture the vital information needed to convert bookings? Click here for one of our favourites – BDRC's Venue Verdict

So we have some of the measures above – we then come the question of how you reward success in these measures?  - is it with vouchers? Cash bonuses?  Extra rooms provided within chain hotels portfolio of hotels?

This is going to sound obvious, but one of the key things to understand when deciding this is – What will our staff respond to? What will motivate them to try and really beat their targets for the above measures? Will they be happy just to reach the target, or will their bonus be increased for every 10% that they achieve over their target?

There are a few measures above – how do YOU do it on property? Are you putting this in place for your teams at the moment?  What difficulties are you having getting it setup?  Does your GM believe it will help drive the business forward? What incentives do you use for your Conference Staff? Comment below!  Don’t forget, you can comment anonymously if needs be...

London Training Discount with Total Revenue Solutions

Once again the team at Total Revenue Solutions have come up with a great discount for Conference Bench clients and users!  They are holding three great training events in London in the coming months, and if you sign up using the code CB2010 you qualify for a 20% discount!
Please e-mail  learnmore@totalrevenuesolutions.com to sign up!


 Here are the courses:
   

London – 21^st/22^nd July - An Introduction to Revenue Management is a two-day training event for anyone who would like to understand the core principles of revenue management and how to apply the principles to their business. The aim of this course is to develop a critical understanding of Revenue Management techniques and how to apply them in your business. Delegates will understand what is required to begin to develop a revenue management culture within their organisation. Modules covered include: Segmentation, Revenue Performance and Analytics, Business and Market Intelligence and Principles of Yield Management. Please click HERE for more information.

£399 per person before CB discount

London – 17^th September - How to Run An Effective Revenue Meeting  is a one day training event for anyone who leads or participates in Revenue, Yield or Commercial meetings and would like to make them more effective. The aim of this programme is to investigate the most effective ways to encourage active participation and buy in from everyone who attends the Revenue Meeting.   Delegates will understand what is required to begin to develop an action orientated, revenue culture. Delegates will explore the area of multiple intelligences and engagement to maximise the effectiveness of their Revenue Meetings. The weekly Revenue Meeting is one of the most critical meetings of the week – at least it should be!  Delegates will learn about the importance that planning plays in achieving a successful outcome, including investigating the key commercial drivers (the ACTIONS!) that should form the weekly outputs of the meeting, to drive commercial results for their hotels. Please click HERE for more information. £125 per person before CB Discount.

London – 4^th October - Effective Presentation Skills for Revenue Managers is for anyone in the Revenue Management field who needs to present information and data and engage audiences. The aim of this programme is to develop Revenue Managers presentation skills and effectiveness when trying to gain buy in from colleagues and senior teams. Our highly practical course enables the learner to absorb a range of tips and techniques which they can immediately practice in a safe, supportive environment. Delegates will learn the importance of preparing content to ensure maximum engagement, with consideration for the “styles” of the audience. Advice will be given to delegates on how to successfully use audience interaction (in a non intimidating way) to give interest and momentum to their presentations. Throughout the day, delegates will be given the opportunity to put into practice what they have learned, and receive feedback from both the trainers and their fellow attendees. Please click HERE for more information. £125 per person before CB Discount.

Are there any areas that you feel need more training and development in the sphere of Conference & Banqueting?  Let us know in the comments!

Auditoriums - What can we do to fill this space at weekends?

Several of our client hotels have large auditoriums. The newer ones are decked out with the latest in Digital technology, good enough to match any local cinema. These spaces are fantastic for corporate presentations, product launches, and other such corporate events.  But what to do with these spaces during the weekend?  During the World Cup we have seen several of these properties utilise the space for big screenings of the matches - but what to do when the World Cup is finished, and you have a lot of weekend availability for your Auditorium?

One example that we have seen recently is from The MayFair Hotel in London.  Once a month they do a great deal which gives a lunch or brunch which includes a ticket to a film screening. Link here for the film deal, and here for the schedule. Not only is this a good way of adding value to your auditorium, it is a nice way of pushing some extra revenue through your F&B departments.

What about your auditorium?  Have you found a good way to drive business into these different, but diverse meeting spaces?  comment below!

A Friday Tale...

We have all been there - turning conference rooms in the middle of the night, all hands on deck - other departments from all over the hotel mucking in to make sure the next day's room setups are ready: The ballroom now spotless (especially difficult after the corporate party that turned into a drinking competition that finished only hours ago!), the table cloths set out and folded correctly,  pads and pens in place, water on the table. You wander in to the back of the house to get the arrival break ready, the coffee machine is gurgling, and the smell of freshly baked pastries and croissants raises a sharp pang of hunger in your stomach, as you realise the last food that passed your lips was a cold banquet dinner over 12 hours ago. Morning break in place, its now time for a last walk around the meeting rooms, glancing at your banquet event order, checking off each syndicate room. You come to the last 2 on the list with 10 minutes to go until the conference coordinator arrives (a particularly nasty one from past experience!). Then the sudden sinking feeling as you realise these final 2 syndicate rooms have been missed - they are still trashed from the night before! Panic sets in, the troops are rallied, the rooms turned, and only  ready just as the dreaded conference coordinator breezes through the front door of the hotel! The conference gets underway, and you retreat to the banquet office, physically and mentally exhausted after 18 hours on the frontline. You handover to the day team, and head homeward, sharing a wry smile with the other night staff who are also leaving for the daytime slumber which awaits.

On the bus home you have a wonderful day dream - those wretched syndicate rooms cleaning themselves, and the tables and chairs magically moving to the correct setup, just like the scene in Mary Poppins... it seems that this dream is not so far away......

Wishing you all a great weekend!

James, Perra & Gabriel. 

Brussels - Top European City of Association Conferences & Some Interesting Data

Today in the Travel Daily News, Brussels came out on top in Europe for Association Conferences. This piqued our interest here at The Conference Bench as we have had a pretty good sample going in the Brussels market for quite some time now.

The criteria that this is based on is as follows:

 “Brussels has risen not only to first place in Europe but also to second in the world according to the UIA criteria, which take into account meetings of at least 300 participants of 5 different nationalities for a minimum of 5 days. According to these same criteria, at least 40 per cent of the participants must come from abroad” Source: TravelDailyNews.com

The article goes onto explain that some of the reasons behind Brussels strong performance; Capital of Europe, phenomenal transport links and a lot of cross border meetings, which we wholeheartedly agree with. According to the article, Brussels held 402 meetings of this type. The reason that this got our minds buzzing is that 402 meetings of at least 300 people, with a minimum duration of 5 days... that must be A LOT of revenue, and seeing as we have the data, we thought we would share it with you.

The average revenue per delegate (RevPD) figure we have for the Brussels market since we started is €57.61, based on 14 properties participating. This is the total RevPD figure from October 2009 – May 2010 inclusive.      

So, doing some simple maths...

300 delegates  x 5 days x 402 events x €57.61 = €34,738,830.00

This is a massive amount of revenue that Association Conferences are bringing into the market!  Let alone the bedrooms! Thanks to STR Global data from YTD December 2009 we can add the ADR for Brussels of  €102.71, we can get a rough estimate of the total revenue: (we have gone with a minimum amount here in terms of rooms sold, so three nights at 175 beds sold per night.)

175 bedrooms x 3 nights x 402 events x €102.71 = €21,676,945.00

So at a conservative guess for the total revenue including bedrooms – €56,415,775.00 in one year! Wow!

We understand that these figures are estimated – we do not have a comprehensive sample in Brussels as yet, but still – what a total figure for one segment of the business in the city! 

Is your hotel in Brussels taking a piece of this revenue throughout the year?  What are you doing at hotel level to try and capture some of this enourmous amount of revenue? if you have more than one hotel in Brussels, are you working together to accommodate the bigger pieces of group business?

Using The Conference Bench, you should see what kind of a slice of this pie you are getting!  If you are not participating, and wish to do so on a trial basis either in Brussels or another of our destinations, please drop us an e-mail at info@jwbench.com! We look forward to hearing from you!

May 2010 Data

(Please click picture to enlarge)
Please find above the total Revenue Per Available Square Meter (RevPAS), by daily average and Revenue Per Delegate (RPD), and detailed Occupancy for the month for our Maturing Destinations. Please leave us a comment if you would like more information.

New Destination - Doha, Qatar.

We are delighted to announce a new destination in The Conference Bench - Doha. This is a fantastic conference destination, with a very strong competitive market place, and we are very pleased to welcome the hotels in the area on board. We now have data for this market so look out for it in our May Data sendout.

More destinations coming soon, so keep your eyes peeled!

Are there any destinations you would like to see in The Conference Bench?  Leave us a comment below, and we will do our best to get it started! Wishing you all a great weekend!

Ash Cloud - Restoring Client Confidence in Conference & Group Bookings - The Solution?

After 2 months of Ash Cloud disruption, we have seen a lot of the hotels we deal with gain (from customers who extended their stay), and some lose (from groups & individuals that cancelled their bookings). Some of those that have lost business, they have been lucky enough to move these bookings into future months, but some of the very unlucky few’s clients have decided not to rebook, as the leadership of the booking company has become tentative and not keen to travel if they cannot get back to their home country easily.

In this morning’s E-Hotelier we see the Great Hotels Organisation launch its Ash Cloud Cancellation Policy. At a glance this is designed to re-enforce consumer confidence – the customer will not be charged for their hotel room, should their travel be affected by the Ash Cloud.

Given the harsh cancellation policies that are usually attached to most larger conference bookings – do you think the same strategy will work for Conference Bookings to restore confidence? It is all well and good to move a few bedroom bookings due to cancellations, but large conference business (and especially those bookings with a lot of rooms attached)?  We have been very impressed with the way the hotels we work with have adapted to the problem of the Ash Cloud – their flexibility deserves a lot of praise, but eventually it will have a knock on effect to budgeting and forecasting, with a lot of pressure being put on the busiest part of the year to deliver the lost revenue.  Where does this flexibility end?  On the client side – Have you started to see some of the more demanding clients request their own Ash Cloud clauses in contracts for big conference and group business?  How are the bigger conference agents handling this new blight on the business, in an already tough market?

Please comment below!

The Importance of Turndowns

As a busy conference office, you are probably turning down a lot of business that is coming through your doors. We have all been there - the enquiries that end up in no man’s land –  from those bookings that are good bookings but don’t quite fit Sales Strategy, to those great bookings that just don’t fit into your space, but would be perfect if you had some outside space for activities, to those events which are put out to every conceivable venue in 8 major cities by overzealous conference agents, that very rarely, if ever confirm. Also when you are really busy taking enquiries for meeting space, why would you want to take the time to put in bookings that are never going to take place, when you could be spending time on your existing clients?  ESPECIALLY those bookings that come from those overzealous conference agents; so many bookings and such a small amount confirm.

So here are some of the reasons why you should be entering your turndowns on property:

·         They provide an accurate  gauge as to your actual business level - You always feel busy, and like there are lots of enquiries are coming through, but how busy actually ARE you? Entering turndowns in to your systems will show the true level of enquiries coming in. Your GM might be thinking – do I keep the conference office open in these tough times? Well we only entered 40 bookings (actually had 180 in total with turndowns) this month – the phones must have been dead, do i really need a team of 4 for only 40 enquiries?

·         Data Tracking – for those venues that take a lot of conference agent bookings – how much are you tracking their business and conversion rate? When the Agent is crying out for more commission, you will have some hard statistics to back up any negotiation you might have with them.

·         Data Tracking – The above goes for corporate clients. Got a corporate client that wants to drop their agreed room nights or rate as they have put a lot of conference business through the hotel, including lots of enquiries?  Get the true picture of their commitment to your property with the actual business AND the turndowns to show how much business the corporate client is putting through the hotel.

·         Existing clients – If you put in enough turndowns from one big client, they will eventually go elsewhere – keep an eye on those big producing accounts – sometimes it is worth taking a bad booking to keep them happy in the long run. Turndowns will help keep a track on the amount of business that these existing clients could be generating.

·         New client Tracking – got a company that is booking a lot, but is not a bedrooms client?  Soliciting new bedroom contracts can be made easy – Ie your company produced 400 room nights last year, and we had another 360 in turned down bookings from our group desk – let’s make a contract for 700 for next year at £xx rate.  

The above are just a few examples of the way in which turndowns can be utilised – there are many more – can you suggest anything else? Of if you have a success story you would like to share from analysing your turndown business?  Please comment below!  

April 2010 Data

(Please click picture to enlarge)
Please find above the total Revenue Per Available Square Meter (RevPAS), by daily average and Revenue Per Delegate (RPD), and detailed Occupancy for the month for our Maturing Destinations. Please leave us a comment if you would like more information.

Can you compare RevPAS on Hotel Rooms with RevPAS on Conference Rooms?

During a lunch in London we started discussing an article we read online about RevPAR, RevPAS, GOPPAR, RevPD and all the abbreviations there are out there to measure your business with. We even got a few new ones on our table after speaking to one of our clients; MCP = Management Controllable Profit. The Conclusions where that there will always be new ways of measuring the business of hotels and venues. Still, our discussion continued and the RevPAS for Hotel Rooms versus RevPAS on Conference Rooms came up as an interesting point of debate – Which actually makes more per square meter? I said bedrooms, and James could not quite make up his mind, but we both agreed that it would be interesting to see if it is possible to do?

So, Back in the office we put together a case study with some data from the Stockholm market on Hotel Rooms (Data collected from December 2009 STR Global):
• Number of Hotel Rooms: 15842
• We estimated each hotel room in Stockholm to have 25m2 so in total in December there were 12.277.550m2 available
• Revenue: 26.888.944 €
• Occupancy: 53,8%
This will give RevPAS (Revenue Per Available Square Meter) on Hotel Rooms at 2,19 €

We did the same for the data we have in The Conference Bench December 2009:
• Number of available conference square meters: 1.246.417m2
• Revenue: 4.924.729€
• Occupancy: 18,48%
This will give RevPAS (Revenue Per Available Square Meter on Conference Rooms at 3,95 €

Looking at the result, we see clearly that there is more € per square meter made in The Conference Department than on the hotel rooms. Still putting all the cost you have per hotel room vs. the conference, for sure the results will shine clear that hotel rooms make more money. This is another story.

Our conclusion is that with the result we have here as our case study plus speaking with our clients and other industry people, is that Conference and Banqueting needs more focus as there are plenty of money to make there when leaving the “First come first served” practice. Think Total Revenue Management in your hotel and make sure you start practicing Revenue Management on your C&E space. Make sure you know your demand pattern, with help from The Conference Bench, also see the demand pattern on the market and in your competitive set. Do you think your hotel makes more money per square meter in its conference space or in its bedrooms? I am sure there will be some calculators humming away in some of our venues!

A guest Post from Jonathan Worsley – Chairman of Bench Events

I arrived in Dubai a few days ago, and since then, I have been very lucky to be one of the first guests in the fabulous new Armani Hotel in Burj Khalifa.  The sleek design of this property will no doubt become a classic hotel and brand image for not only Dubai but the hotel industry globally.  

I am now back at the Madinat Jumeirah where preparations are fully underway for the conference which starts on Sunday -  we have held the Arabian Hotel  Investment Conference at The Madinat since its first outing some 6 years ago.  We are very pleased to welcome our investment community delegates from the region, and from all over the globe – I can tell you, it was a real relief that the Ash cloud abated just in time, not only for us but also for all of the industry professionals that will also be attending Arabian Travel Market as well - it is a big week for the travel industry in the Middle East!  The theme this year is Unlocking Investment Opportunities in the Middle East and North Africa and we hope that delegates will have an opportunity to unlock a few deals during the conference!  We have over 600 delegates and its going to be a great conference with receptions tomorrow night  hosted at the Madinat Jumeirah and Sunday at the Armani Hotel.

The Team at Bench Events are looking forward to seeing you all in Dubai, and wish you the best for all of your deals and meetings!

Jonathan Worsley.