TECHNOLOGY
WE ’ VE REALLY BEEN FOCUSED ON SMALL GROUPS BECAUSE THAT ’ S WHAT WE ’ RE SEEING . BUT THE GOOD NEWS IS THAT THE LARGER GROUPS ARE NOT CANCELING – THEY ’ RE RESCHEDULING . ANOTHER POSITIVE SIGN IS OUR BUSINESS TRAVEL ACCOUNTS ARE EXTENDING RATE .
KELLY KNOWLEN
business has dried up and it ’ s going to be difficult for a while . For those convention markets , it ’ s going to be really interesting to see what happens with attendees . While we ’ re not seeing as many cancel , how big are those meetings really going to be ?
We actually just beat our April lead volume , seeing corporate uptick , which is really good for everybody .
The rest of this year is going to be really interesting with the vaccinations and restrictions lessening , but we ’ re really optimistic . I ’ m excited about where we ’ re going .
H : What does the next 6 months look like ?
Surette : We ’ re seeing a really nice surge of small , short-term business . It may be 20 , 50 , 75 rooms , but there ’ s a lot of it for the next 90 days .
We ’ re doing quarterly budgets , and we ’ re going to walk into May with our budget on the books . That ’ s how quick and short-term it has been .
Then there ’ s a little bit of a gap in the summer , and we ’ re seeing nice business picking up in the fall … I think Q4 is going to be a nice quarter for all of us . And then , hopefully , we ’ ll get back to booking further out .
Knowlen : We ’ ve really been focused on small groups because that ’ s what we ’ re seeing . But the good news is that the larger groups are not canceling – they ’ re rescheduling .
Another positive sign is our business travel accounts are extending rate .
Ronk : Melia had the foresight early on in this pandemic to create a LinkedIn group page , where we were able to invite our customers to be members . It has allowed us to engage with our customers on creative and enlightening virtual events with relevant speakers , and keeping them up to date on what was new in our portfolio . Then , on Zoom and Teams , we were having one-onone quarterly updates because we couldn ’ t go to client ’ s offices or their destinations . We were really able to find out what they needed .
H : What tactics are helping drive business that is coming back ?
Surette : As things started to loosen up , it was how do we tell customers what we ’ re doing with an Omni Safe & Clean , and what protocols we have .
We did a lot of virtual events , and since our customers were locked up , we went out to see them . We rented an RV , wrapped it with Omni , and we drove around the country hitting 15 sites . We ’ re going to do the West Coast this fall . As time went on , we increased our virtual selling and our hybrid content …
There are some trade shows and industry events later this year that maybe we ’ ll all get out to . And little by little , we ’ re going to spend more time with our customers and our teams . We ’ re adding back sellers , too . We will bring people back into the fold and redeploy them into the market . It ’ s going to be an evolution . We ’ re going to change the tires as the car ’ s going down the road for the rest of this year .
H : What technological advances and innovations are driving business ?
Knowlen : We looked at the portfolio to identify who was hybrid ready . That was the big , big piece of work for us to help our customers really understand what hotels
92 hotelsmag . com May / June 2021