As an event organiser you will have a very long list of every factor related to your upcoming events. You will be being pulled in multiple directions and possibly have targets, both monetary and sign-up, which you will be pushing to meet. From our many years of experience we found that stopping every now and then allowed us to put our heads above the parapet and check on whether we had missed a major time saving or money making system. As all event organisers know, a little time in the planning is worth it! We have pulled together a variety of advice, tips and ideas from across the events industry for you to browse through – take a break from the planning, just in case this could help you out.
Event Manager Skills: Providing a hotel add-on service
You may have noticed that when you attend a large conference or exhibition the organiser provides a variety of additional services in order to make your visit as easy as possible. One of those additional services is that of hotel facilitation, an area where the organiser provides a website and/or telephone service for you to book a hotel near the venue. Is this a service that you could be offering your delegates?
Why provide a hotel booking service to my delegates?
There are a number of benefits to providing this service to your visitors/delegates, from both marketing and financial perspectives. Here are the key ones:
1. Additional Services to your visitors/delegates
Any additional service to your visitor benefits you as the organiser. The easier you can make it for the visitor/delegate to attend your event, the more likely it is that they will. Helping them find a hotel room for the duration of the event with the minimum of fuss and at the rate and standard of hotel that they want will go a long way to making them rate you highly as an event manager.
2. Data collection
The more information you have about them the more you will be able to specifically target them. For example, if you know that the majority of your key clients will be staying at certain hotel then it would make sense to hold your key dinner or reception at that same hotel to ensure their attendance.
3. Financial Return
Depending on who manages the hotel block, there is the potential to receive a share of the hotel commissions and complimentary nights. With commission returns ranging from 5-10%, it can be a very profitable venture for the larger events, and a useful bonus for smaller ones too. Here is an example of a large exhibition in London:
- 2,000 people attend a 3 day exhibition in London. 40% of the attendees are based in London. All others would be travelling in.
- Taking an average of three nights per travelling attendee, you have a potential total of 3,600 room nights.
- Using a conservative rate of £100/night, that would total £360,000 in hotel spend, giving a commission value of around £30K plus 72 complimentary room nights!
That’s easy money, how does it work?
A block of rooms is contracted with one or more hotels near your venue. The contract will confirm a set number of bedrooms over the event dates, with an agreed rate, commission and cancellation terms. Your event website would have a page dedicated to booking information where enquiries would be directed. After the event the hotel(s) would calculate the final number of bookings completed, and pay out any commission owing.
All sounds simple, and it is, if you only have a small number of bookings to handle. The hard work comes with the management of the individual bookings, changes, and cancellations. Then of course there is the initial negotiation and management of the contract with each hotel.
If the service is no longer sounding as attractive as it was, then don’t worry. There is a simpler way, one that most of the large event organisers use.
Out-Sourcing the Hotel Service
There are many travel agents, housing bureaus and DMCs that would gladly assist you with the provision of your hotel service. They would then manage all enquiries, bookings, changes and cancellations, work directly with the hotels to ensure all bookings were confirmed and of course handle the contract negotiation. You, the event organiser would not need to be involved in the administration of the service at all. BUT, that does mean that the commission you could have earned would be diverted to the agent instead, to cover their management costs.
Which agency to use?
If you are only managing a small event then you may feel that you could handle the management of a block of bedrooms within your events team. Alternatively if you are using only one hotel then they could likely handle all enquiries direct to them. The first option would place more work onto your team but give the benefit from either commission or some free room nights. If your event is large enough to need multiple hotels then a contractor is going to be needed. There are a wide variety of travel agents, housing bureaus and freelancers that are available and all would provide basically the same service. The differences would be the level of customer service, choice of hotels, rate negotiating skills, marketing ability and of course their willingness to share the commission.
So to summarise the options you have:
- Manage the hotel block yourself
- High workload for you / your team
- Receive all the commission
- Great revenue generator
- Ask an agency to manage the block instead
- They keep the commission
- Professional booking service received by your guests
- No revenue generated
- Work with one hotel and provide a hotel booking code to your guests
- Bookings handled professionally by the hotel
- No revenue generated, but you may receive one or two free nights
- Or you could just provide a list of hotels to your guests
- Quick and easy option
- No revenue generated
Of course ideally what you should be looking for is an agency that splits the commission with you. They handle the bookings and the contract management, but split all commissions earned at least 50:50 with you. After all, you’re the one providing the potential bookings!
You may decide that it is easier and simpler not to bother with any of this and disregard the service altogether. Easy and simple, but you could be missing out on some easy money…
This article was written by the team at Hotel Desk Series - The Hotel Desk Series provides an online hotel booking service, through our partners at Expedia, to event and exhibition organisers across the world. A customised “Event Hotel Desk” can be built within the hour, providing the organiser with a commission generating hotel booking service, which can be promoted to their visitors/delegates. Though we say “easy money” don’t forget that there is still some work to do!
Tags: ACC Liverpool, Bangkok BITEC, Birmingham NEC, Bournemouth BIC, Brighton Centre, Brussels Expo, Crocus Expo, Earls Court London, Edinburgh EICC, ExCel London, Frankfurt Messe, London Olympia, Manchester Central, Porte de Versailles Paris, RAI Amsterdam
