An Industry Update on the Future of Meetings

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On April 27th I had the pleasure of attending the Las Vegas Hospitality Association (LVHA) event “An Industry Update on the Future of Meetings” held at Park MGM. I could write endlessly about the passed mocktails on arrival and the warm welcome (it was my first LVHA event).  

Dawn Holden (Vice President of Business Sales with Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority) had great questions for the panelists:

I’ll dive into the highlights of the commentary from the speakers below and share my anecdotal feedback on what they shared. I hope that it provides some actionable takeaways or just gets your wheels turning!

Stephanie Glanzer

Innovation During Darkness 

Stephanie opened up the discussion talking about how MGM used the down time in the past couple years as a catalyst for innovation. It was an opportunity to really dive into the customer journey and find efficiencies, and to use technology to do things that hotels had previously never used technology for.  

This resonated with me because it was surprisingly parallel to our journey at Parclane. We talk a lot about how we can enhance the meeting/group buyer experience because we reimagined it based on our own experience as hoteliers and meeting planners to truly put the hotel customer front and center. Rather than looking in isolation at individual pieces of the buying journey, we took a birds eye view to eliminate time consuming manual processes that hold sales teams back from selling.  Now is the ideal time for hotels to look at enabling their sales teams with automation.

Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

Stephanie also talked about how the industry took a very holistic approach to working together during crisis and toward recovery, and how inspirational this was. I believe that we are in an era where the typical hotel <> vendor relationship needs to be reimagined. As hotels are investing in new technology this should be a key consideration in any purchase.  Is the vendor going to be a true partner, working alongside you to ensure your success? Or is this a transactional relationship? Before entering into a relationship with a vendor see if they meet these top requirements: look for white glove services, commitments to regular success meetings and vendors with rich lived experiences in the field.

Business Impact; It’s Not Just for GMID

Lastly, Stephanie talked about some of the work being done in Washington by the Meetings Mean Business Coalition. As hoteliers, we need to do a better job of understanding the ROI that a meeting, event or conference can bring to an association or organization. To echo what Stephanie shared, this is a key piece that needs to be exposed. For example, an annual conference may be a key revenue driver for an association. Without that revenue, the work that organization is mandated to do could falter - along with its economic impact. We all need to be advocates for our industry. 

Pro-tip: Hotel Sales Managers who tap into this “why” with your customers can benefit from a deeper understanding of your customer’s needs and key drivers when selecting a venue for a program. When you present solutions that hit this nail on the head, you’ll become a trusted advisor and win business time and time again.

Let’s not get too busy “getting busy again” to lose sight of the opportunity to focus on efficiency, structure and process technology and the positive impact it can have in our sales offices.

Lisa Messina

Ready, Set, Meet!

Lisa highlighted that the people want to be in-person more than ever, and that customers have moved beyond considerations of health and safety and are ready to meet. Let’s go! The industry has done an excellent job of proving that we can safely return to in-person gatherings and this isn’t the key consideration for buyers. Hotel Sales Managers should lean into the benefits of face-to-face interaction to forge human connections and advance business or organizational objectives.

Leaving Money on the Table?

After sharing a personal story about a friend in the business who was just returning to the sales office, and how far behind some properties will be because they don’t have sellers in place to support the demand levels right now. Lisa’s testimony echoes what I hear almost every day when I meet with hoteliers - RFP volume is rising, demand is surging and there simply aren’t enough hours or bodies to respond to everything. There’s an opportunity for technology to help hotels with this right now.

Road Warrior Hotel Sellers

I was curious to hear that Caesars has a mostly remote sales team of in-market sellers. Lisa talked about the changing dynamics of selling in person, particularly as many hotel customers that sales managers would traditionally meet with in-office have not, or are not ever returning to office. What does this mean? Many Sales Managers are going to need to start hitting the road in their territories to re-engage buyers.  An impact question I’d ask if I were a hotel sales leader - what tools does my team need to be mobile-enabled? Travel takes time, and there are some really cool ways technology (like ours!) can help keep leads engaged while sellers aren’t at their desks.

Michael Dominguez

New Buyers, New Priorities

I’ve heard Michael always brings a mic-drop, and he didn’t disappoint. Something I haven’t heard from hotels is about repeat customers drying up - but it was certainly food for thought. Michael talked about how corporate America is getting new leadership and how the buyer landscape is changing. New executives, new companies (particularly in high-growth sectors) are planning meetings and events differently. Some programs that have historically repeated annually or regularly are being moved into different destinations, or rotating around multiple cities. 

Pro tip - do you have any repeat programs that could be at risk because of a change in leadership at the top or changing cultural dynamics within the organization? If I was a hotel Sales Manager this is definitely a question I’d be digging into with buyers as I recalled key accounts.

Deconstruction of Meetings

I’ve heard of deconstructed salads but a deconstructed meeting program was new for me. Michael mentioned that many planners have used the time the past few years to assess the efficacy of their legacy event programs. What this means is they’ve been looking at whether or not large events, bringing together multiple departments or groups help the organization advance their objectives better vs. having smaller, departmental-level events or smaller programs with less attendees and a more focused agenda. As these meetings are being broken down into smaller pieces, it’s not necessarily resulting in less spend - just that the spend is being allocated across multiple programs.

For hotel sales teams this can present a few challenges and opportunities. When large programs are broken down into multiple smaller ones, this means preparing more proposals and contracts, which can take time. Additionally, there’s an element of risk where a program you were sure to win on a regular basis could start looking to other destinations or properties that it previously didn’t fit.

Staying on top of your key buying relationships and asking smart questions of your planner partners about this topic will help you get ahead of these shifts. Smart hoteliers will leverage technology to do this, and in the case of lost business, will leverage thoughtful automation to track key data points to recall that business in a smart way.

Record number of RFP’s

Michael shared that ALHI had a record number of RFP’s come to them in the month of March. While that’s consistent with what I’ve heard from many hoteliers about March driving a record volume of inquiries, what surprised me was that Michael shared that in ALHI’s case, 50% of that business was for 2022 program dates.

Wish I didn’t have to say this…

Michael cautioned us as an industry to ensure that we are responding to planners and to staff up because planners are complaining that responses and proposals from hotels aren’t coming in - or are taking too long.

While we’re facing labor challenges and looking for smart ways to do more with less, technology like Parclane can really help out here - allowing hotels to engage planners in real time, and to put their labor to its highest and best use - focusing on the client opportunity and selling vs. time consuming manual processes.

Educating Planners to Maximize your Revenue

The topic of inflation came up quite a bit during the discussion and again, Michael opened my eyes to an interesting opportunity for savvy hoteliers to engage with their current customers (planners who already have Definite business for 2023 and beyond).  The discussion was around additional costs like F&B pricing, AV and other expenses that don’t necessarily get booked with the hotel until much closer to the program.

Michael encouraged hotels to begin engaging with their 2023 customers to educate them on some of the increased costs that they could expect in advance of the customer budgeting for 2023. While this may not be the easiest conversation, I believe that most planners would rather know ahead what to budget appropriately - so they can get their meeting stakeholders on board sooner.

Once companies and associations have set their budgets for the year, it can be difficult to get extra spend approved - and this could have a positive or negative impact on a program and the relationship with the hotel. From a revenue perspective, the opportunity for hotels to capture spend is important to attempt.

Michael had some interesting tips for how hoteliers can approach this conversation with planners and I’d be happy to share them with you if you’re interested? DM me.

Richard Harper

If I took anything away from Richard, it’s how passionate he is about our beloved industry and how deeply he understands the economic value of it. 

Richard opened my eyes (as someone newer to hospitality) that the industry is bigger, from a GDP perspective than fashion, spectator sports or automotive. I think it’s important that we never lose sight of this - and continue to engage both at an organized and grassroots level to ensure our politicians understand the importance of our sector and the issues we face.

 

In closing

Thanks to the panelists and moderator for sharing so generously of their time, and for the LVHA and their partners and sponsors for producing such a great event! If you haven’t already, definitely check out the event photo gallery.  And, their next event on May 25th!  Hope to see you there?  Message me if you’re going - I’d love to make a new hospitality friend.
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