BestGroupHotels Launches

by Sam Fahmy, Vice President of Marketing

Take-Aways from the 2009 PhoCusWright Conference

by Clayelle Wolf, Marketing Analyst

There was no shortage of travel technology food for thought at The PhoCusWright Conference, November 17-19, in Orlando. Innovation was the unofficial conference theme; it made me consider the savviest ways in which we are all adapting. While it’s easy to talk of cutting-edge change, many times there is a wide gap between dropping the buzzword and making concrete, progressive changes in the way we do business. Looking through the Passkey lens, I focused on ways companies were digesting, implementing and finding success with some new tools in the event management and internet travel space.

As would be expected, social media received a lot of attention at the conference. The first step in utilizing online networks is in paying attention to what is being said about your brand. The “Social Web” is one of the most remarkable and powerful collaboration tools (check out the video from 10BestSolutions). Two-thirds of the global Internet population visits social networks – 10% of all Internet time is spent on social networks. YouTube’s global audience size is as large as the European Union. If Facebook were a country, it would be the fourth most populated in the world, just behind the United States. Your customers and prospects are already on social networks – go find them and converse through whatever media they favor. United Airlines learned the hard way…see “United Breaks Guitars” on You Tube, now at 6.2 million downloads.

Such conversations with our customers along with our business strategies change, but brand awareness remains important. With the amount of effort poured into Search Engine Optimization and the advent of social search (see Google’s new application launched October 26^th), partaking in multiple online networks is the next key step in sustaining and nurturing a brand online. A company can renovate and respond to shifts in the marketplace without changing its business model. For example, PhoCusWright invested with the on-demand online ticket, improving the event and increasing exposure by 130+ virtual attendees. Priceline and Expedia valued European expansion. Steve Kaufer spoke proudly of TripAdvisor’s role in pushing hotels to listen to the loud and clear consumer voice. Fly.com, Cheapflights, Bing Travel and Kayak talked down and dirty about the evolving priorities of an Online Travel Agency.

Speakers addressed how they were using new media and fervor in a transitioning market and in addition, the PhoCusWright conference itself housed many success stories of integrating new technologies into already existing strategies. New this year were unique twitter hashtags for each segment. One woman tweeted that she was unhappy with the shuttle service and upon reading, the planner adjusted accordingly. A fire drill in the middle of day three. When someone tweets that the pause was actually welcomed because it provided better networking, that comment gets factored into next year’s schedule. Satellite reception (registering attendees for the event when they check into the hotel in the lobby) was a huge hit. There is the cost of the wireless tablets, extra printer and staff, but the attendees loved bypassing the main registration desk. The conference iphone app gave attendees a real-time schedule and an additional networking platform. The Travel Innovation Summit showcased companies taking a stab at improving user experience with unexplored techniques. With regard to event planning, SpeedRFP offered a great example of making venue hunting more efficient.

It’s challenging to embrace continuous company updates while remaining loyal to an overall governing strategy. However, this event inspired me that amidst a flailing economy, rampant opinions and a sometimes overwhelming stream of new technology platforms available, no one is immune to or incapable of finding ways to do things a little better.

Can the Apple Store Teach Us Anything About the Group Sales Model?

By Greg Pesik, President and CEO

I recently gave a guest lecture to a class of hotel students on the group and meetings’ industry and a question arose regarding what impact the “merchant model” or supplier-site group booking capabilities will have on the traditional group sales model.  While the online model can and is working well in many cases for simple meetings, the complexity of packaging an online sale obviously grows with a larger meeting that includes meeting space, F&B, AV, etc.   Pricing becomes determinant on factors well beyond number of attendees of the length of stay.

Nevertheless, what all the technical issues like availability, dynamic pricing, and instant meeting room configuration, were overcome and meeting planners could assess options across a broad range of venues easily, would the traditional hotel sales model or third party site selection model be in peril?

The December 2009 issue of Consumer Reports there is an interesting report regarding the Apple Store.  Based on responses from 31,000 readers who bought electronics between June 2008 and June 2009, the Apple Store tied for top honors in the category of Electronic Retailers and received the highest possible marks in the areas of product quality, customer service and buying ease.

But, Apple.com didn’t even make it into the top 15 online electronic retailers.

Oh, by the way, the Apple Store got failing scores for price and selection.  (Everything’s available on Apple.com).

Maybe we can’t draw any parallels between Apple.com and Imgoingtobookmywholeeventonline.com, but I think sales, the person to person kind, remains as important as ever.

Is Your Rooming List Process – PCI Compliant?

By Dave Lutz, Board of Directors

For consumers, data security and privacy concerns have reached an all time high.  The hotel industry is not exempt from this threat as reported earlier this year with a data breach at Radisson Hotels.  One case of mishandling credit card information can be very costly to fix and can do incredible damage to the hotel’s brand.

By now, most hotels and legitimate distribution channels have gone through the expensive exercise of ensuring that their systems are PCI Compliant.  Several months ago, AHLA took proactive action to help standardize compliance across the five major credit card companies.  Most of this effort is designed primarily to protect consumers on the transient distribution channels.

The group and meetings market is especially at risk when it comes to casual exchanges of rooming list information, including credit card guarantees.  Planners routinely submit rooming lists on excel spreadsheets and forward those lists to host hotels via unsecured email over the pubic internet.  Within the hotel, these emails are then forwarded across internal networks to reservations for processing.  In addition, there remain many reported cases of faxes with guest credit card information either on rooming lists or individual reservation forms.

These practices expose hotels to an unacceptable level of exposure; not only in terms of comprising a guest’s personal information, but the reputation of the property or brand as well.  A hotel’s risk management and data security plan can ensure that it minimizes the risks associated with the group and meeting reservation process by following even a few key procedures:

1. Create a process whereby planners can upload their rooming list to a secure and encrypted site for processing.
2. Ensure that you have proper training and guidelines for safely storing and destroying documents or files containing personal or credit card information.
3. Have systems in place that require employees to regularly change their passwords.
4. Ensure that housing service providers and their technology solutions have proper procedures in place to meet your data security standards.  Request proof of their PCI DSS compliance.

To help address this business concern, Passkey developed Room List ExpressTM.

Is your hotel doing enough to help ensure data protection?  Are there other best practices that you are implementing that may be helpful to other Passkey users?

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