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!