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!