NASHVILLE, Tennessee — Meeting planners and attendees are looking for unique experiences just like transient travelers, and the hotels best equipped to provide those experiences in a practical way are poised for success, experts say.
Speaking during the "Group Think: Making the Most of Events" session at the 2024 Hotel Data Conference, Heather Farnam, senior vice president of sales for HEI Hotels & Resorts, said her company is seeing group bookings exceeding 2019 levels. Part of maximizing that demand is understanding the spaces a hotel can utilize other than traditional ballrooms and meeting spaces.
"I think the big thing for us in the hotel world is walking our hotels and really understanding every nook and cranny we have and how do we utilize it," she said. "If we have a library, let's do receptions in there or little breakouts. Do we have restaurants that we use only for breakfast? Let's do the lunch there, but let's also have breakout spaces and general sessions in those spaces. Let's go ahead and use the courtyard for yoga or a reception."
Farnam said it comes back to creativity and collaboration to create a unique experience at events. And that includes across-the-board communication within a hotel to better understand what the capabilities are on property.
"At the end of the day, the hotel is not just a sales team that makes things happen, it's the entire operation," she said. "So making sure that you are working together with the operations team, from front desk to outlets to housekeeping, and making sure you're communicating clearly what the objective is to make a successful event happen. That then creates the environment for a client to have a successful event.
In addition to using non-meeting space for meetings, Kerry Mack, chief revenue officer at Highgate Hotels, said it's important to examine dedicated meetings spaces to see if they're as profitable as they should be.
"We've taken some of our meeting space that wasn't actually very profitable and purposely shut it down because it wasn't making sense for the hotel and focused on other areas," she said, noting a shift to "rooms-only group business."
At the same time, some of Highgate's resorts didn't have enough meeting spaces, so they found short-term solutions to fit in that demand.
"We brought in huge tents that could stay up for a season, six months at a time, and all of a sudden you have the size of three extra ballrooms," Mack said. "That completely changed the trajectory of the [demand] mix at that hotel without some huge renovation infrastructure budget. There's a lot to do to be creative."
In terms of making the most of events, hoteliers need to have more empathy and understanding for people planning events, said Heather Dameron, travel program manager for Next Level Performance. She often tells clients to "book further out so they can get more favorable rates and dates," but sometimes they're operating at the whims of executives within their companies that are focused on other things.
"Sometimes they're trying to get their key stakeholders involved and to get approvals," she said. "I know that takes time, and you guys know budgets are set well into the future, so getting ahead of when their budget period is is really important. So having a really good dialogue, like 'Hey, this would be beneficial to all of us. Help us understand your business so that we can help you get more favorable rates and dates.' But also obviously giving them time to make those stakeholder meetings happen and to be able to make that to the finish line is great."
One of the challenges in the group and meetings space is booking spaces — particularly for small, simple meetings — is still too complicated and can't be done instantly online like rooms, Mack said. She added this should be a priority for the tech providers in the industry.
"There's a lot of companies that keep trying to solve for it, and a lot keep saying they're close, but they're not there yet," she said. "I'm hoping this is the year we're going to get there."
Patricia Shea, senior vice president of revenue for Knowland, agreed that that kind of automation can help salespeople spend more time on "high-value interactions with customers, as opposed to going back and forth four times on contract [for a small group] is a huge area for improvement."
But she said it's not just a technology issue.
"How much is it really hotels needing to change the mindset of how far in advance can you book a meeting room without having to talk to somebody? I think there's a real mindset change on how hotels hold their spaces," she said.