Recently posted on ehotelier, Benchmark Hospitality’s Top Ten Meeting Trends for 2010, give a very interesting view of what 2010 holds in store for Hoteliers with large conference facilities. After working in the markets for several months now, we here at The Conference Bench are inclined to agree with most of the trends detailed. Although the article is US centric, a lot of these trends seem to be reflected in the markets that we are working with currently.
Looking at the trends, is there anything else out there that is affecting your market place? Clients demanding their own contract terms and conditions? Agents demanding higher commission, or commission on your rack rates? What is your outlook for the market in 2011?
Most insightful comment wins easter chocolates delivered to your door! Entries to be in by the end of next week for a post easter treat!
Monday, 29 March 2010
Friday, 26 March 2010
Websites for Conference Facilities
After being live in Stockholm now for some 10 months with 35 venues submitting data for conference benchmarking, we have been spending an awful lot of time looking at the different web pages for all of the hotels and conference facilities, not only in Stockholm, but in all of the markets we operate in. One thing is clear from this research, the websites are not always the clearest when looking at the meeting facilities. A lot of chain hotels are restricted by what they can do on the web by having to conform to the standard web layout of that group or chain. For more and more of our clients the way to get around this is to have a dedicated site for the hotel itself, that appears above the usual web site when the hotel is googled.
A good example of this is the Novotel London West Hotel. This hotel has some of the biggest meeting facilities in London, and has a dedicated site
When compared to the actual Accor link, you can see a major difference in the way that the hotel is presented, with a sharp focus on meetings and events on the dedicated site, while the Accor site itself only has one line of small text to distinguish this as one of biggest conference and events facilities in London. The dedicated site does a pretty good job of distinguishing the USP’s of the conference facilities, and even includes a tour of the event side of the hotel “through the eyes of an event planner”. Is it any wonder that these big event hotels are designing their own sites when their major business segment is so poorly supported by the regular chain hotel site?
A couple more examples:
• HIlton London Metropole: Direct Site/Brand Site
• Grand Hotel Stockholm: Direct Site/Brand Site
There seems to be a correlation between how seriously the hotel takes its conference business(or how much money this side of the business is driving through the hotel!), and the strength of the website (only of course if they firstly have permission from the parent brand or chain, and secondly have enough spending power to create their own dedicated site.)
From our perspective, it can be incredibly hard using the internet to properly get your Conference message across in an easy to understand and sellable way. Here are a few to the things that we think help get this message across from the sites we have seen:
• Images – we all want to see all possible angles of the facilities?
• Can I browse around to see how each conference room look like? Examples?
• Can I change the setup of the conference rooms visually and also do price comparisons?
• Is there menu example for F&B?
• What activities can I book in and around the conference rooms? Outside space?
• On – Line booking of conference rooms, is this possible?
• USP – Unique Selling Points, are they highlighted?
• Location - is it clear how to get there?
Why not contact your own web designer for an update? We can also recommend our partner Xotels.com
We have also seen a move by some groups to put small meetings availability on their site as well – see here for an example, while this is a bold step, and probably very suited to smaller meetings, do you think that losing the human touch from booking a meeting will mean a drop off in bookings? Our opinion, is that the easier it is to book events and meetings for your clients , the better!
What are your thoughts on Conference Websites? Have a burning issue with your chain or brand about the quality of your website? Comment below, anonymously if needed!
A good example of this is the Novotel London West Hotel. This hotel has some of the biggest meeting facilities in London, and has a dedicated site
When compared to the actual Accor link, you can see a major difference in the way that the hotel is presented, with a sharp focus on meetings and events on the dedicated site, while the Accor site itself only has one line of small text to distinguish this as one of biggest conference and events facilities in London. The dedicated site does a pretty good job of distinguishing the USP’s of the conference facilities, and even includes a tour of the event side of the hotel “through the eyes of an event planner”. Is it any wonder that these big event hotels are designing their own sites when their major business segment is so poorly supported by the regular chain hotel site?
A couple more examples:
• HIlton London Metropole: Direct Site/Brand Site
• Grand Hotel Stockholm: Direct Site/Brand Site
There seems to be a correlation between how seriously the hotel takes its conference business(or how much money this side of the business is driving through the hotel!), and the strength of the website (only of course if they firstly have permission from the parent brand or chain, and secondly have enough spending power to create their own dedicated site.)
From our perspective, it can be incredibly hard using the internet to properly get your Conference message across in an easy to understand and sellable way. Here are a few to the things that we think help get this message across from the sites we have seen:
• Images – we all want to see all possible angles of the facilities?
• Can I browse around to see how each conference room look like? Examples?
• Can I change the setup of the conference rooms visually and also do price comparisons?
• Is there menu example for F&B?
• What activities can I book in and around the conference rooms? Outside space?
• On – Line booking of conference rooms, is this possible?
• USP – Unique Selling Points, are they highlighted?
• Location - is it clear how to get there?
Why not contact your own web designer for an update? We can also recommend our partner Xotels.com
We have also seen a move by some groups to put small meetings availability on their site as well – see here for an example, while this is a bold step, and probably very suited to smaller meetings, do you think that losing the human touch from booking a meeting will mean a drop off in bookings? Our opinion, is that the easier it is to book events and meetings for your clients , the better!
What are your thoughts on Conference Websites? Have a burning issue with your chain or brand about the quality of your website? Comment below, anonymously if needed!
Wednesday, 24 March 2010
Monday, 22 March 2010
Occupancy Calculation for Conference Rooms
Conference benchmarking is new for most of us and all the statistics that are coming out are still quite difficult to translate into actions as there is not yet a year of historical data in place to see long term trends and year on year statistics. Still, the trends are clear and the indications are very interesting to follow. You should always ask yourself, does my venue follow the trend or lead it?
Our focus is to make conference benchmarking to work for as many venues as possible; so we need to KEEP IT SIMPLE. With this in mind, there are venues with Delphi or Opera that can easily get all possible statistics out, but there are many with simple homemade systems, old systems, and yes even simple excel spread sheets for keeping track of their business.
We have made a really nice start and we are now looking at improving the Occupancy benchmarking part of our system as that is highly requested from several of our users.
After sending out a request for feedback to the larger venues and our main contacts, we do unfortunately have even more grey hairs now than before as this has proven not to be easy at all.
Right now we have around 10 different ways of calculation Occupancy for conference:
This is what we have today:
Anytime sold no matter how long or how many time during 24h = 100%
Below please find some example on our feedback:
- 2 parts a day – Morning + Afternoon = 100%
- 2 parts a day – Day + Evening = 100%
- 3 parts a day – Morning+Afternoon+Evening = 100%
- 3 parts a day - Morning+Afternoon+Evening = 300%
- 3 parts a day - Morning+Afternoon+Evening = 150%
- 3 meal periods a day = 100%
- Min 5 hours per day = 100%
- Depending what type of conference room; meeting room 2 parts, Banqueting room 3 pars, board room 2 parts etc.
- Define the number of hours your space can be sold for, determine the number of hours in use and the percentage of that
Still our conclusion is to make sure this is simple and no further effort to input data is needed. We will keep the dialogue with many of you and hope to develop the Occupancy later this year.
On the above feedback examples, are there any other you have in mind that is not mention, please let us know.
What do you think? Is conference space occupany a relic left over from rooms measurement? Or is it still a relevant way of measuring performance? Ideally we would like to try and set an industry standard, so that there is an easy way for all to get a good understanding of what constitutes good performance. Please comment below!
Our focus is to make conference benchmarking to work for as many venues as possible; so we need to KEEP IT SIMPLE. With this in mind, there are venues with Delphi or Opera that can easily get all possible statistics out, but there are many with simple homemade systems, old systems, and yes even simple excel spread sheets for keeping track of their business.
We have made a really nice start and we are now looking at improving the Occupancy benchmarking part of our system as that is highly requested from several of our users.
After sending out a request for feedback to the larger venues and our main contacts, we do unfortunately have even more grey hairs now than before as this has proven not to be easy at all.
Right now we have around 10 different ways of calculation Occupancy for conference:
This is what we have today:
Anytime sold no matter how long or how many time during 24h = 100%
Below please find some example on our feedback:
- 2 parts a day – Morning + Afternoon = 100%
- 2 parts a day – Day + Evening = 100%
- 3 parts a day – Morning+Afternoon+Evening = 100%
- 3 parts a day - Morning+Afternoon+Evening = 300%
- 3 parts a day - Morning+Afternoon+Evening = 150%
- 3 meal periods a day = 100%
- Min 5 hours per day = 100%
- Depending what type of conference room; meeting room 2 parts, Banqueting room 3 pars, board room 2 parts etc.
- Define the number of hours your space can be sold for, determine the number of hours in use and the percentage of that
Still our conclusion is to make sure this is simple and no further effort to input data is needed. We will keep the dialogue with many of you and hope to develop the Occupancy later this year.
On the above feedback examples, are there any other you have in mind that is not mention, please let us know.
What do you think? Is conference space occupany a relic left over from rooms measurement? Or is it still a relevant way of measuring performance? Ideally we would like to try and set an industry standard, so that there is an easy way for all to get a good understanding of what constitutes good performance. Please comment below!
Monday, 15 March 2010
What pops up when you Google “Conference Room Stockholm”?
Some years ago, when I was still working with Revenue Management, we did a case study to improve our web-page visibility. We contacted a company that is specializing in this and for a small amount of money we should appear on the first 10 or in worst case first 20 hits on google. It was very successful and our web site traffic increased a lot.
I just now did a small test by just Googling “Conference Stockholm” and the first conference venue to pop up is Stockholm City Conference Center in the first 10 followed by Nordic Hotels in the next 20.
Why not Google your own conference venue and see where you pop up? There are several companies that can help you improving your search position on Google, yahoo, bing, etc. Maybe start to ask your web page creator if the know a good one?
I just now did a small test by just Googling “Conference Stockholm” and the first conference venue to pop up is Stockholm City Conference Center in the first 10 followed by Nordic Hotels in the next 20.
Why not Google your own conference venue and see where you pop up? There are several companies that can help you improving your search position on Google, yahoo, bing, etc. Maybe start to ask your web page creator if the know a good one?
Friday, 12 March 2010
IHIF 2010 & Total Revenue Management
The Annual IHIF (International Hotel Investment Forum) Conference in Berlin is completed and to a very nice surprise there were 100 more attendees than 2009, and 500 attendees that never had been to the forum before – excellent signs that business is moving again.
We are extremely pleased with our meetings with investors, owners, CEOs as these people are not the usual target audience we meet in our daily dealings with The Conference Bench. This data about C&E is not available out there for them and is really critical to help them make better decisions. We received very positive feedback on our reports and system and this will be very helpful in the coming months of business. We hope for either the next IHIF 2011 or possible already at AHIC (Arabian Hotel Investment Forum) in Dubai later in May to present some data or at least raise the subject higher up the agenda.
The topic of Revenue Management was on many speakers agendas as one of the most important aspects of Hotel management to guide hotels through this difficult time to manage with the stress of less demand and tougher competition. A lot of focus was on Rooms Revenue Management which is 70% or more of their business for the majority of hotels, but several also mention that Total Revenue Management is the real Key to success, and managing the downturn. We were extremely glad to hear this as C&E and F&B are generating money as well, but again – no one really knows how much revenue is in the market, and how much their hotels are taking.
Do you already practice Total Hotel Revenue Management or are you planning to get it into place in the near future? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
We are extremely pleased with our meetings with investors, owners, CEOs as these people are not the usual target audience we meet in our daily dealings with The Conference Bench. This data about C&E is not available out there for them and is really critical to help them make better decisions. We received very positive feedback on our reports and system and this will be very helpful in the coming months of business. We hope for either the next IHIF 2011 or possible already at AHIC (Arabian Hotel Investment Forum) in Dubai later in May to present some data or at least raise the subject higher up the agenda.
The topic of Revenue Management was on many speakers agendas as one of the most important aspects of Hotel management to guide hotels through this difficult time to manage with the stress of less demand and tougher competition. A lot of focus was on Rooms Revenue Management which is 70% or more of their business for the majority of hotels, but several also mention that Total Revenue Management is the real Key to success, and managing the downturn. We were extremely glad to hear this as C&E and F&B are generating money as well, but again – no one really knows how much revenue is in the market, and how much their hotels are taking.
Do you already practice Total Hotel Revenue Management or are you planning to get it into place in the near future? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
Tuesday, 9 March 2010
February 2010 Market Data
Please find above the total Revenue Per Available Square Meter (RevPAS), and Revenue Per Delegate (RPD), and detailed Occupancy by daily average for the month for our Maturing Destinations. Please leave us a comment if you would like more information.
Wednesday, 3 March 2010
IHIF & ITB 8th - 11th March 2010
James and Perra will both be attending IHIF and ITB in Berlin next week! If you would like to meet up there, please leave us a comment below, and we can arrange a meeting! We look forward to seeing you all there!
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