While challenges persist, such as labor shortages, new or inexperienced meeting planners, food shortages, cost increases, and shorter booking windows, some travel markets have fully recovered. Restrictions have been lifted in China and the EU, business travelers are back on the road, and the summer of 2023 is expected to be busy as leisure travelers return to vacationing and group business continues its resurgence.
All the while, the industry is actively working on rebuilding and retooling as guest expectations continue to shift higher. Deeper and tighter alignment across all stakeholders (i.e., owners, operators, brands/chains, and those that service the industry) will be the key to addressing root issues more quickly and easily. Technology is an enabler and essential in our industry, but a hotel’s technology must work correctly and be used to its full advantage. To do this, staff must be adequately trained with technology that provides connective tissue to join everyone responsible for delivering exceptional guest experiences. Doing so will ensure that the intended experiences are delivered and desired outcomes are realized.
A Changing Meetings and Events Landscape
Ongoing momentum in meetings and events data benchmarked against 2019 indicates remarkable growth metrics in events activity. This is a strong indicator that recovery is here, so it is up to today’s hoteliers to ensure they can deliver the service and experiences customers expect and be prepared to pivot as expectations evolve.
The desire to create memorable experiences reaches beyond leisure travel. From the perspective of meetings and events, guests and meeting planners want a greater focus on “postable” moments and unique experiences. This means that hotel sales and operations teams must be as efficient as possible, particularly when it comes to selling and understanding the expected experiences. Being productive with smaller teams means leveraging data that tells them what is happening in their market, what is happening with the competition, and how to boost RFP win rates and/or increase direct bookings. This year is a turning point for the industry as it leverages data to maximize performance and drive efficiencies, all while meeting guest and planner expectations.
However, cutting costs while providing a memorable experience is a heavy lift. Many hoteliers strive to offer a unique guest experience without passing costs onto the customers.
Implementing profitable opportunities and establishing and maintaining a bookings base for today’s hoteliers requires a robust meetings and events pipeline. Even those hoteliers that have smaller properties are taking advantage of utilizing space to accommodate group activities.
Navigating the RFP Tsunami
From a sales perspective, shorter lead times pressure a salesperson’s ability to respond quickly and appropriately. Nevertheless, even as meeting planners look to create memorable moments for their customers, they are also flooding the market with RFPs. In the past, meeting planners sent RFPs to a select group of appropriate meeting venues. However, the staffing shortage in the past two years resulted in fewer or slower responses, so planners have increased their outreach. The result is fewer targeted RFP requests and a corresponding influx of low-win probability RFPs for hotels and venues.
While this is an excellent indicator that meetings are back, it also slows down the process of responding to appropriate opportunities for your venue. Sales leaders should avoid getting lulled into a false sense of security that increased volumes of RFPs automatically equates to increased business. The most likely outcome is a reduced RFP conversion rate for hoteliers. Truth be told, not every RFP is a good RFP. There needs to be a balance between business sourced from RFPs and business sourced through proactive direct engagement.
Actionable data insights in the hands of the right sellers allow them to track market and account changes, prioritize proposals that fit their property, and differentiate their property even better for each individual response. Actionable data insights in the hands of the right sellers allow them to track market and account changes, prioritize proposals that fit their property, and differentiate their property even better for each individual response.
To assist sales staff as they gain ground in identifying the best opportunities for their hotels, sales staff must be given the proper data-driven analytics to ensure they have the information they need to gain insight into past events for an RFP account. These insights help sales staff determine if a particular group request is appropriate to their venue and allow them to focus on the relevant RFPs and/or spend time sourcing direct opportunities. Factors such as booking history, brand and location preferences, typical cities, and chain scales booked all help sales teams understand the group expectations and desired experiences.
Across the board, data-driven insights are one of the critical drivers for gaining access to opportunities that increase productivity and enable growth. These insights, particularly as they apply to the shifting sales cycle, provide an in-depth look into today’s evolving buying behaviors. For instance, leveraging data to understand the market helps sales teams make more informed decisions to win the “RFP game” and increase the volume of direct bookings.
Ultimately, the right tools and actionable data insights in the hands of the right sellers allow them to track market and account changes, prioritize proposals that fit their property, and differentiate their property even better for each individual response.
Returning to the Basics of Teamwork
The resurgence of travel is what those of us in hospitality crave, and the focus and dedication we have put into the recovery will continue to pay off. Meetings and events in 2023 were strong right out of the gate, and meeting planners are much more confident moving into this year.
If the COVID downturn taught our industry anything, it was to return to the basic constructs of teamwork between sales, catering, and operations teams to solve extreme challenges in the face of adversity. Another aspect of working together as a team is the collaborative partnership between hoteliers and their solution providers. Those hoteliers who continue to foster these examples of teamwork will ensure that today’s expectations are met, and in return, growth and profitability will be the biggest winners.
