CHARLOTTE, North Carolina—A new tool developed by UrVenue and Club Med has been unveiled at HITEC 2024. The Group Itinerary Builder provides a way for hoteliers to build itineraries for groups while providing travelers with a clear view of their itinerary the entire time.
“Demand for group events is on the rise, and along with that comes a desire among travelers for unique experiences, such as tennis, sailing, kayaking, waterskiing, snorkeling, and even flying trapeze,” said Tracee Nalewak, chief growth officer, UrVenue. “Based on our long-standing relationship with Club Med—pioneer of the all-inclusive concept—we collaborated on a tool that will empower group attendees to explore property activities and review their event schedules in one interactive guest portal complete with itinerary management capabilities. We cannot wait to showcase this joint technology at HITEC.”
UrVenue created the Property Experience Management System (PXMS) in 2022 to enable commerce, operations, data insights, and knowledge management for resort and entertainment experiences that bridge the booking journey with booking capabilities. Called UV Enterprise, the PXMS was built for nightclubs, dayclubs, restaurants, lounges, pools, resort beaches, sportsbooks, special events/shows, recreation, and more.
The Group Itinerary Builder was designed as a centralized system for tracking guest itineraries. It gives group travelers more control over their experiences while providing hotels with the tools they need to fulfill group expectations. The tool can be adjusted by hoteliers on the fly while allowing group members to track all of their planned group activities through a Guest Portal. This centralized system gives hoteliers a way to provide a guest experience while giving travelers the widest possible control over their stay experience.
Some features of the Group Itinerary Builder include the ability to:
- Develop a digital itinerary builder/manager for group attendees to explore and manage resort experiences alongside pre-scheduled events by combining work and leisure activities in one unified itinerary. Provide groups with self-serve information and operators with the ability to service itineraries on behalf of the guest.
- Create a globally scalable module within UrVenue’s PXMS (property experience management system) that displays group event schedules and activities in one unified itinerary.
- Generate an email invite for group attendees to access their personalized guest portal, showcasing their group itinerary and information regarding hotel activities during their leisure time before arriving. Enable real-time messaging by integrating live updates into the itinerary for group attendees during their stay.
- Automate manual processes within Club Med’s Meetings & Event sales team and other interfacing resort departments. Provide coordination tools through the itinerary builder and manager for staff to assist group attendees.
- Increase revenue through activities and extended stays (bleisure) by showing all hotel activities and excursions to group attendees.
“Club Med has a long history of hospitality innovation, as the successful co-development and launch of this technology attests,” said Vikki Knudsen, senior director sales strategy—meetings and events, Club Med. “Group attendees are not as proactively managed by hotels as leisure/transient guests, despite being a significant part of the hotel’s customer base. They often have to research the hotel themselves because someone else booked it on their behalf. They also are typically not included in pre-arrival communications that share property information, booking links, or a hotel app link. Until now, itinerary-building opportunities, especially those considering event schedules and other activities, simply did not exist.
“Now that the Group Itinerary Builder has been successfully implemented and tested at Club Med Cancún, we can begin rolling it out to additional properties in our portfolio,” Knudsen said. “We are incredibly excited to start focusing on revenue generation by incorporating third-party excursion bookings and exploring ways to drive incremental room nights with group guests. What we’ve accomplished here at Club Med with our entire meeting and events industry is very exciting. We are on the cusp of a paradigm shift in group attendee management, which will lead to more satisfied customers and significant financial gains for the hotel group segment.”
