A new product from Starcite shows some promise in this area:

The StarCite Group Rate Advisor equips meeting planners and meeting suppliers with forward-looking hotel rate forecasts using meeting planning data from RFPs flowing through its meetings platform.

Using data collected from StarCite’s marketplace, StarCite can produce reports for any city or geographical region, that will provide sleeping room rate ranges and trends as far as twelve months in advance. The StarCite tool will also provide in-depth benchmarking information derived from years’ worth of historical booking data from the StarCite marketplace.

More at Starcite

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Travel Management reports on a study by PWC which shows that 38 new hotel brands have been introduced over the last three years - with most of them targeting younger travelers for whom technology is indispensable.

For the complete article which includes a list of the new brands click here.

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The Intercontinental Hotel Group is taking their corporate responsibility to a new level and using the power of Web 2.0 to design the most environmentally friendly hotel.

Visitors to the website can review a hotel design, check the new environmentally friendly features and contribute new ideas to improve them - the interactive site allows users to wander through the hotel reception, go to a meeting room or lets you into a bedroom and points out what is new. And this is where you get involved - one gets to rate on a scale of one to five as to how good an innovation it is and add further comments.

The key areas in focus are

• Energy conservation
• Recycling
• Water Conservation
• Destination conservation

Definitely worth a visit to check out a great collaborative approach as well as to get some very good ideas in the above areas.

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According to a Travolution report, British Airways has joined forces with Microsoft to develop a media rich research and booking tool for its website.

The project is based on Microsoft Silverlight rich media technology and aims to move away from traditional web selling by trying to inspire customers with detailed tourist information, pictures, video and other graphics.

The ‘Inspire Me’ tool tries to get behind people’s emotions when they come to the site looking for a holiday by breaking it down into what they want to do in destination, what their perfect night out is, what they like to eat and what style of place they want to stay in.

So will BA give the Online Travel Agencies a run for their money? We’ll have to wait and see……..

So does a true boutique hotel have to sell its furniture or artwork? Join the debate started off by iescape.com on what makes a true boutique hotel.

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At the Baggers restaurant in Nuremberg, Germany, there are no waiters but the food does get to your table - and no it isn’t on a conveyor belt either! More at http://www.sbaggers.de

Websites like Starcite will play an important role as a group channel for some time to come. And so will some of the software solutions that support them in improving sales management. 

StarCite is a leader in this market and offers on demand global meeting solutions that help hotels market, get and manage leads and book more revenue. StarCite’s Marketing Programs help suppliers gain a competitive edge showcasing their properties against thousands of others. Once you get the leads, StarCite’s innovative Response technologies help respond fast and track the progress of leads. www.starcite.com
 
Some other event websites include
www.worldmeetings.com
www.conventionplanit.com
www.sitevisit.com

When it comes to meetings and events, and supporting sales operations effeciency, here are two leading players - one is PASSKEY which is big in the US but not widely used in the European markets - they are a provider of web-based applications that automate the group housing management and reservation processing for the meetings and convention industry. www.passkey.com
 
And when it involves saving double entry for group booking and reservations teams, then a major player is MEETINGBROKER (part of Newmarket International). It is a web-based information service that distributes and manages leads from multiple business channels (example: starcite, company websites). MeetingBroker receives requests for proposals (RFPs) sent by meeting planners and provides a suite of online tools to more quickly assign, respond to, and analyze these leads. It allows the leads to be created directly in the sales and catering system used by hotels provided they are interfaced or if they use Delphi Sales & Catering.  
www.meetingbroker.com

Influence from procurement departments particularly in big companies have increased over the last years – procurement being the more ‘in’ word for purchasing. While this brings about a lot of savings for the company, planning events becomes even more challenging as it allows less room for flexibility for the meeting planner. According to a C&IT survey in 2006, ‘’the power of purchasing officials clearly isn’t going to go away’’

So how does the procurement department of a big corporate company influence event organisation? The procurement department continually looks at ways of lowering costs and in many cases will advise Travel and Event Managers on which suppliers to use. Sometimes this leaves the event planner with limited choices and having to make some hard decisions.

But actual measurement of ROI remains a challenge with conflicting ideas on how to do it….and the frequency of such measurements vary as well.

So with ROI being a difficult one to measure and influence, I think that hoteliers will have to look closer at

1. UNDERSTANDING GROUP CHANNELS BETTER
2. RESPONDING TO GROUP ENQUIRIES BETTER
3. CONVERTING GROUP ENQUIRIES BETTER & IMPROVING CONVERSION
4. IMPROVED MEASUREMENT & ANALYSIS

and address each of these areas to improve their own ROI in sales efforts for the groups segment.

Here is how each of these areas can help you optimise your sales efforts.

1) UNDERSTANDING GROUP CHANNELS

• Identify the channels where group enquiries originate – Regional Sales Offices, Agencies direct, DMC’s, Corporate web site

• Use a targeted approach for different channels

• Understand their specific needs & decision making process

• Identify their preferred methods of working, payment methods, lead times etc

to be continued….

As per one of the recent reports from trendwatching.com this is real and it is being ‘tried’ out by hotel companies in the US and Australia. It is based on the fact that high end travellers are hard for marketers to reach in general except for occasions such as when they are in a hotel room - and this concept of having a captive audience is what leads hotels and other industries to collaborate on ‘TRYVERTISING’

According to the article what is different with this approach is that it finds a way to market products at the critical time when the product is “relevant” to consumers - when they are tired, hungry, and so on. Deals range from the availability of Aveda toiletries in Westin hotel rooms to Mercedes-Benz cars for guests at the Ritz-Carlton

Click here to read the article at trendwatching.com

• E-mail marketing - For limited e-mailing (ie not for corporate giants), my pick is Icontact for its user friendly interface, possibility to do surveys, creating a newsletter from a web page and low costs. http://www.icontact.com/ It is also possible to create surveys quickly which I have found very useful.
• Analytics - Google analytics http://www.google.com/analytics/ for the reasons discussed in the previous post
• Search Engine Optimisation - http://www.webceo.com/ has a free and paid for version which allows you to automate web search engine and directory submissions
• Trend watch - http://www.trendwatching.com/ the trend setter in the area of picking up trends in all areas. While not specific to hospitality, it has more than 8000 ‘trendspotters’ around the globe watching carefully for emerging trends and ideas in all areas. A very good example of a trend spotted relevant to hotels is ‘Room service with Ads’
• Competitor Intelligence - Travelclick for its specialised products and expertise in hospitality and the value it brings to the understanding of competitor statistics. http://www.travelclick.com/