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