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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Check out Swissotel’s new website which they launched last month - very smart and stylish with the only hitch being the loading times on some pages.

The site also includes a good online group RFP tool using Starcite at the back end.

Here is what they say about the RFP tool

”Unlike a conventional Request for Proposal (RFP), our Online RFP helps you build a complete meeting request by walking you through each step. You can fill in as much or as little information as you want. Your profile, as well as each RFP, is automatically saved and can be copied, forwarded or modified for future meetings, reducing data entry errors and saving time.This Online RFP is fully integrated into a Hotel & Facility Search Directory. Simply select the facilities you are considering, create the RFP and submit the request instantly to each of the hotels you have selected.”

More at http://swissotel.plansoft.com/global/rfp/index.asp

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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

As there is no consensus about a generic term for them (or rather have not heard of any), I have settled for SMD (sales, marketing and distribution) - a boring and highly predictable acronym which is not going to please anyone, but it will have to do for now.

SMD’s they are, as that is what they do - Sales, Marketing and Distribution. How much more they do, how well they do it, and what criteria they have differs from company to company.

To start with, here is a quick look at the Sales services that they offer

UTELL HOTELS & RESORTS - focuses on the TMC’s

• Comprehensive account management of top Travel Management Companies to ensure that member hotels benefit from the same business opportunities as the global hotel chains
• Broad network of regional and national sales to negotiate access to valuable regional and local sources of business

DESIGN - does not give enough detail, but mentions their presence at trade shows

• Membership Services
• Sales & Marketing Services
• Travel Trade Shows

SUPRANATIONAL - strong focus on TMC, corporate RFP’s through Lanyon, sales activities

• Global exposure of the Supranational Hotels portfolio to the travel community; travel agents and the corporate market.
• Centralised RFP submission
• Road shows and sales days

WORLD HOTELS - strong focus on corporate and group business

• Corporate Rate Programmes
• Worldwide Consortia Contracting
• 3 dedicated global group desks working for the meeting product

GREAT HOTELS OF THE WORLD - great focus on the corporate sector

• Consortia and direct-to-corporates GDS sales campaigns
• Meeting and incentive planner sales blitzes
• Individual sales blitzes for member properties

RELAIS & CHATEAUX - focuses on promoting properties at events and shows

• Promotion of properties and the brand on the international level, trade fairs and exhibitions, sales blitzes, showcases and large-scale public events.

LEADING HOTELS OF THE WORLD - powerful brand name, more focused on marketing

• sales and promotional activities

Independent hotels will benefit the most with an SMD company association, if they take a good look at the service offering and ensure that what the SMD company focuses on, is in the area of interest of the hotel.

Moving on from sales, I will take a look at the Marketing services on offer, but that will have to wait for tomorrow or the weekend.

DISCLAIMER: Information and comments provided here are to provide an overview. It is not meant to indicate the full service offering of these companies in any way.

The number of Google applications which exist are phenomenal - no wonder it dominates the internet. So whether it is the independent hotelier or a chain, there is much to be made from looking at how some of them can be made to work for the hotel industry.

1) Google Analytics

Analytics is becoming more and more well known as a fantastic application to track and analyse visitors, trends, searches etc. All it requires is the insertion of a small html code generated by Google Analytics into your web template or the page you want to track. From the following day, a multitude of options to understand visits by city, which keywords have landed them on the site, which websites have sent traffic, which pages are most popular and how long they stayed there - just to name a few, will be available on your dashboard as you log in…used well, this is a great way to focus marketing funds as well as to correct weaknesses in the website in terms of retaining customers. The possibilities are endless and I have just listed a few - more at http://www.google.com/analytics/

A sample screenshot of the dashboard

2) Google maps

They are a great way of pinpointing hotel locations on your website http://maps.google.com/

3) E-mail with Gmail

While most corporate organisations as well as smaller companies have their own domains and e-mail set ups, managing their e-mails while travelling has always been a challenge. Gmail is a very flexible solution which allows you to respond with your domain e-mail provided you set it up that way. So even if one does not have company wide intranets and VPN dial ups, Gmail offers you a simpler way of responding to work e-mails while on the move. You can also pick up e-mails on gmail on your mobile phones as long as you have internet access. http://mail.google.com/mail

4) Blogger

While there are still discussions on the pros and cons of blogging, there is no doubt that if you are looking for one of the most user friendly blogging platforms, Blogger will come on the top of the list. http://www.blogger.com/

Wordpress is another blogging platform popular with the blogging community.

5) Google search

While this is certainly not news, very few people use google search effectively. With the internet throwing up hundreds of thousands of new sites and blogs every day, the accuracy of the search becomes more and more relevant. Spending an hour to understand the mechanics of the search function on google can save hours and hours of time when one needs quick access to relevant accurate information.

Just using quotes around the term you are trying to find gives you far more accurate and as well as better related results eg: “itb”berlin, rather than itb berlin on its own.

And of course there are more, Google documents, Google calendar, Google Picasa for managing images, Google Adwords etc

E-commerce or electronic commerce can be summed up as cashless transactions - buying and selling of goods and services on the Internet. And this is (or should be) a top priority for hotels these days.

The reason is simple to understand - the value of goods and services purchased on the internet has gone up substantially over the last years. And this is very true with what a hotel has to sell - accomodation, meeting rooms, spa packages, restaurant bookings etc.

So where do you start? The key to effective E-commerce has to be a good store front and that is the hotel website. Having an intuitive, easy loading, structured and uncluttered site is critical. The possibility to click and buy at any stage of the website visit is important and so is the availability of live inventory. Then it becomes easier to negotiate arrangements with Online Travel Agents (OTA’s) to sell your products and distribute it further.

While distributing your rates to OTA’s the key area to watch for is rate parity - ensuring that the rates are the same across all channels.

The latest Phocus Wright study on Online Travel in the US year ending 2007, shows that, the trend of consumers utilize hotel websites more often than Online Travel Agents continues. In 2006 the percentage of direct bookings at hotel websites was 59% and the prediction is that this will go up to 65% by 2009. Which naturally means more money for the hotel, but also means that hotels have to work harder for their online share……

While these are travel and buying trends in the US, the most advanced E-commerce market, these are already filtering down into Europe and hoteliers better get their store fronts looking better, easier to use and even more importantly easier to buy.

And dont forget the latest buzz word which is M-commerce for mobile commerce - transactions made through mobile devices such as cell phones, PDA’s and other wireless handheld devices.

Omni Hotels has recently launched a brand wide mobile website which empowers guests to make reservations, review hotel information, browse special offers etc with any handheld wireless device. From what I could find out, it will be up and running in the next months and is not live at the moment.