Everywhere we look someone
is discussing meetings: meetings management, strategic meetings management,
small meetings management – but this is not a new subject. ‘SMM’ has been the ‘next big thing’ for
years. So why, after all this time, is
there still so much talk and so little action?
Admittedly there are
plenty of reasons offered up:
No clear internal
owner to champion the initiative and drive success. The absence of a solution that is easy to
deploy, supports broad based adoption AND integrates with the rest of your
hotel management strategy. The other
perennial favorite, “we don’t really have that many meetings”, is also all too
often cited.
These and many other
factors contribute to an ‘Ostrich Mentality’: I can’t see it, therefore it
isn’t there.
But it IS there and
the cost implications of ignoring this category can be huge. Admittedly, you don’t know what you don’t
know, but from our own experience the total ‘hospitality’ spend for the
majority of organisations is split across 3 areas – 40% on Transient
Accommodation, 40% on Meetings and 20% on ad hoc Projects. If your focus is purely on your Transient
Accommodation, you are managing less than 50% of your total hotel spend.
So – how difficult
can this really be?
You need to
understand what your requirement is, so start small. Begin by identifying your target
audience. Head for the departments most
likely to generate meetings bookings – sales/marketing, training, the executive
floor – and ask for volunteers for a ‘super-user’ test team.
At this stage, you
want to garner support and not give the impression that you are trying to take
away the responsibility for these meetings.
All you want is to build the environment where everyone creates their
meetings requests (RFPs) in one place.
From there you will quickly gather the data you need to put the
‘strategic’ into strategic meetings management.
Aim to start with the
small frequently booked meetings. The large
conferences and major company events may be the more visible piece but (a) it’s
always much tougher to persuade these bookers to give up any aspect of control or
management of these bookings and (b) the chances are that you spend much more
on smaller meetings. You are offering
meeting planners a solution that will take the ‘grunt work’ out of the process
without stripping them of ultimate control and the easiest meetings to target
for this are the smaller ones – which are usually just a time consuming chore
for those that have to book them.
Ask a few basic
questions:
Approximately how
often do you book? What’s the average
size of the group and the length of the meeting? What are the most common features they always
need (refreshments, break out rooms, AV equipment etc)? What type of venue do they typically look for
(hotels, internal meeting space, other venues)? Where do they go to find these venues and what
influences their choice?
The answers will help
you build the most useful information and features into your RFP tool so that
the first time a meeting planner looks for a venue for a meeting, they find
what they expect to see and the basic information is pre-loaded to make it the
simpler process that you promised!
So all you now need
is a system that all your meeting planners can access with nothing more than a
User ID and Password, without any additional implementation, and with just an
hour or so training.
And if they like it,
if the system gives them access to the properties they need, helps them create
an RFP with all their requirements in 4 easy to follow steps, presents the
responses in a format they can share with their colleagues, gives them full
budgeting and reporting capabilities and allows them to complete the process in
a fraction of the time, then you’ve got your ‘champions’ within the
organisation and selling the benefits to others will be so much easier.
And finally, the
single most important element to consider.
The first step on the road to success is always the hardest. As you
ponder this article, think about this.
What stops you from being the
internal champion that gets the ball rolling at your company? Just because you don’t have it in your job
description, does that mean you can’t own it?
At a time when companies are in a constant process of evaluating people,
processes and performance, perhaps the greatest
thing you can do for your company and yourself is to take that critical first
step.
This blog has been written by Jean Squires, director of business development EMEA, Lanyon. To find out more about how the Lanyon Meetings RFP Tool can help please contact Jean at jean.squires@lanyon.com
