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.

The London Market is hotting up!

A quick update for all of our lovely London users, the following hotels are in their training period, and will be joining the market report very soon:

The Park Lane Hotel 

Le Meridien Piccadilly

Sheraton Park Tower

The Hotel Russell

Westminster Bridge Park Plaza

We are very pleased to welcome our first conference venue on board in London:

The Grand Connaught Rooms - Fresh from their £7million refurbishment!

Keep an eye on The Benchmark Page to see when they come on board. 

Are there any other properties/conference venues you would like to see on board The Conference Bench?  Drop us a line in the comments with your suggestions!

Lets hope the weather is nice for the Bank Holiday!

The Conference Bench is on the road!

Monday and James & I took early flights over to Berlin to first complete a very good meeting with a potential business partner. After a nice lunch in the Schöneberger area, we headed for NH Friedrichstrasse (that was very kind to host us with a free conference room) and the presentation for the Berlin conference hotels.
Upon arriving, we also remembered that we forgot to book us a hotel room! Experienced hoteliers as we are, how could we forget that? Still, again NH central office in Berlin arranged that too. Many thanks for your help NH!
Getting a group of almost 16 persons from different hotels representing around 20000m2 meeting space gave really nice feedback to our presentation. Using the Frankfurt market as a case study as that market is already up and running to show the system and reports gave a really good picture and discussions after the presentation was nice. Clearly, we are sure that we are as of mid to end of May having the first hotels benchmarking the conference in Berlin on the free trial.
We also must highlight the restaurant we were recommended. “The Grill Royal” on Friedrichstrasse 105 - excellent steaks!

Coming presentations and fairs:

MUSCAT, OMAN
Starting on Saturday May 1st @ 1500, Perra is presenting The Conference Bench in Muscat. Invited to this presentation is also the Ministry of Tourism of Oman and Deloitte. The presentation will take place at the Al Bustan Inter Continental Hotel.

DOHA, QATAR
Sunday May 2, 1530 local time, James is presenting The Conference Bench in Doha. The presentation will take place at the Ritz-Carlton hotel.

ABU DHABI, UAE
Monday 3 May at 1800 local time, both James and Perra will hold a workshop for existing and new users in Abu Dhabi. The workshop will take place at the Crown Plaza Yas Island.

ATM – Arabian Travel Market – DUBAI, UAE
4-6 of May, both James and Perra will be visiting the ATM Fair. We are both seeing new clients as well as follow up with existing clients.

Drop us a note in the comments if you would like to arrange a meeting, and we look forward to seeing you all there!

PMS systems for C&B

About 50% of our clients do have difficulties extracting daily data. Several reports have to be extracted and possible manual calculations made. The other 50% has absolutely no problem and they provide us easily with data in minutes for years back.

This really feels like when we started The Daily Bench in 2001. We asked the clients to submit ADR (Average Daily Rate) plus number of sold rooms and we were at the same challenge as today with historical data:

• “sorry we have to pull it out manually”
• “sorry, we cannot get the ADR”
• The worst one: “we do not have any historical data”

This morning I had a very nice call from a Hotel in Copenhagen that is just in the situation being stuck with a limited PMS provider. They have seen the other venues in Copenhagen gaining market intelligence on C&B and they are way behind now. They decided to upgrade now and as of June 2010 they will be onboard.

We do see that the PMS providers starting to wake up as you all need reports and statistics easily, not only to work with The Conference Bench, but other systems too.

Do you have any experience to share as we are happy to push from our end as well.

Market Situation due to Icelandic Volcano?

No one has really missed the information about the ashes that is spread across Europe in the last days. Even in this turbulent time some funny jokes are already online:

• ”A special announcement to the British and Dutch Governments: We don't have C in the Icelandic alphabet, so when you ask for Cash, all you get is Ash”.
• 2. ”Icelandic taxpayer to Britons and Dutch: forget Icesave, kiss my ash!”
• 3. ”First they burn our money, then they send us the ashes.

Ps. We love jokes in the office – please do not be offended! 

I did actually get stranded as one of the other millions on the roads across the globe. After good meetings in Stockholm, walking my way to the airport I got a text message from Brussels Airlines; “BRUSSELS AIRLINES INFORMS THAT YOUR FLIGHT IS CANCELLED” – well nothing to do, I quickly rebooked my flight to the next day as I thought this would be over quickly but just after 2h I got another text message that the second flight also was cancelled.

What to do? What rights I have from the Airline Company? What insurance do I have?

When all that sorted, I called Hotel Skeppsholmen, a lovely new hotel in Stockholm where I stayed the first night to see if they had availability for a second night. The men at the reservations told me, “I just had 40 cancellations, but now within 1 hour, 35 new bookings” and I was lucky to get one of these cancelled rooms.
With the information from the news, this would most probably be a long stop and I decided to try alternative travel ways. Going to Central Train Station in Stockholm to see if I could book a train ticket back to Belgium was more or less impossible and online all tickets sold out. It is good then to have friends that work in the business. I had part of my ticket within 30 minutes. I left for Copenhagen late on Friday, but there all stopped, I had to wait 2 days before getting on the train further south. Sunday noon, the German ICE train had openings and I got a ticket for the 11h train journey across Denmark and Germany to Belgium. It was actually quite colorful trip. Next to me I had a man from South Africa that had been to a conference in Stockholm, trying to get back to Madrid and catch a flight there back home. Opposite a man from Mumbai, India that been to another conference in Gothenburg. He was trying to get to Brussels to fly back to India. On the other side an American couple that was trying to get back to Paris to catch their Trans Atlantic flight. A lot to speak about and all helping each other the best way and I must say the train crew really did a good job. Holding trains for better connections, adding cars to existing train sets etc. But I am glad, I made it home and I should not complain as I know others are on longer train journeys or on busses across Europe. I have a friend who’s next available flight from Sydney is the 29th April!

After speaking with several hotels this week, they were going wild for sky high turnover in the weekend, but the week now starting on the 20 April – a new week and people are not flying in to their meetings. Cancellations cancellations and more cancellations!!!

How is it at the conference side, lots of cancellations and movements as well? What cancellation policies do you have? Are you allowing them to rebook in the coming months Did you change them the last days? Please share your thoughts!

Why People do not join The Conference Bench

We have decided to put together a list of some of the responses we get when calling and e-mailing our prospects to invite them onboard for a FREE trial to try out the system and reports.  Some are actually quite amusing to hear and read as the size of their meeting space gives them a competitive edge in the market, not only in their conference revenue, but with group attached to conference as well. Bearing in mind the vast amount of revenue that can be made from good conference Strategy, we find this quite surprising:

Just a few of our markets to give an example for march 2010 data:

·         London:  €8.87 Million in conference revenue alone – that’s an average of €467,000 per property (19 mostly 5* properties)

·         Frankfurt: €256,781 per property . (total €2,824,600 from 11 properties)

·         Oslo: €375,659 per property (total €6,761,863 from 18 properties)

With that said, we experience that there is a lot to be done in the C&B segment to optimize Revenue.  We have now trained around 80 venues how to use the system and the reports and for the venues that do not yet practice Revenue Management on C&B, they see great potential to maximize this revenue stream.  Forecast and Budgeting on C&B is not always practiced and it is then difficult to set strategies and actions on sales.  But still, our Conference Bench system can tell you where you are strong and weak and see how much money that is generated in your competitive set and in your market. One of the other key benefits our clients have seen is this – is our marketing spend and strategy actually giving us a competitive edge over the compset/market? This information is a BIG surprise for many when they see it for the first time. Market intelligence is the key to success! 

Please find below our list of replies – of course we will never mention where it comes from!

• “we have no time for further tools” – says a conference hotel with over 2000m2 conference space
• “we need approval from our head office” – this one is getting better and better as most major corporate has given a go to their hotels
• “we do not practice Revenue Management on C&B – “first comes first served, so we do not need benchmarking information”
• “we are not sure conference benchmarking information generates the money we invest – well if you do not get on the FREE Trail, you will never know
• “we do not have any competitors, or at least we do not know who they are?” – one of the best!
• “we do not agree with the data guidelines, we only want to benchmark room rental” – we stick tightly to the Uniform System of Accounts to be able to match our data to your P&L statement
• “we do not share information outside our building” – too bad, benchmarking is  proven to give you better decision making stats.  Also to get information, you do need to share, as rooms benchmarking has demonstrated.
• “we do not believe that our competitors are entering the correct data” – this is a tricky one, but as long as data entry is consistent, then at least you can see trend information and get feedback from the competitors and market. This is no different from any other benchmarking program. Also –  why would you enter incorrect data? What is the point in that – this goes for all venues.

Look out for a new blog post soon with the reasons why people have been joining The Conference Bench!

March 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.

A La Carte Meetings vs. Day Delegate Rates (DDR)

Feedback from our users on our data guidelines has been great and the version we use is in line with the Uniform System of Accounts 10th Edition, to make sure the data meets the month end P&L statement.
The breakdown of 8h or 24h delegate rate has been questioned a lot as apparently more and more conferences are now booked “a la carte” meaning they book a conference room with room hire only and then bolt on what they need, when they need it. A lot of our contributors feedback that this is an effect of the economic downturn, where companies want to have their meetings in a venue, but from past experience decide to cut back on all the perceived “extras” of the DDR/24 hr rate.
What is your feeling, is it still that most clients book delegate rates or are they buying a room hire option and then adding on to it? Is this affecting the way you are pricing your room hire, food and beverage options? Is the price of room hire, food and beverage creeping up to make up the difference when the A la Carte option is used? Are you beginning to dynamically price your food and beverage as well as your room hire during busy periods? Please comment below!

New Article - HRR February 2010

Please click here to see the article.