"We won't sell our meeting rooms online" attitude has changed and it was about time!

During the last 3 years we have seen a big change in the mind-set of meeting venues. 3 years ago when we were pitching our idea and product to meeting venues the reaction was that:

“WOW, this is great, BUT we will never sell our meeting rooms online”.

We have understood the technology bottle necks that you can not force Hotels to update any secondary extranets for availability. This was the main reason we started to offer in the beginning a possibility to just add prices to kill even one of the issues in the industry which was transparency in price.

This was a needed step and believe it or not this small change increased the conversion of confirmed bookings to over 4x to the traditional eRFP. Which makes sense, since customers knew the price in advance and could compare the options side by side.

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We have never quit with pushing the online solution to the market since we have always trusted that the industry needs to change and the eRFP spam needs to stop. Lately the reaction from meeting venues has also changed and they are more and more looking ways to streamline their sales processes while saving in costs.

“We did not know this kind of a solution exists, this is exactly what we have been looking for”.

One of the big wins was that we validated our integration to Opera Sales & Catering as the first company globally. As a result the Hotels and venues using Opera S&C don't need to update any secondary extranets.

What does this functionality mean for the customers?

• Customers see live availability of meeting rooms instantly

• They can also see the prices for DDRs, room rentals and even the additional F&B/miscellaneous products 

• They can decide to make a instant booking directly and confirm the booking without any additional reviews needed

• After the booking MeetingPackage.com provides a customer facing order management solution to give the customer the possibility to communicate with the venue and amend the booking if so needed

• When everything is done online and centralized the customers can get real-time reporting of their meeting expenses

What does this mean for the meeting venues?

• Hotels or meeting venues can automize the sales of their meeting rooms & services

• Less eRFP spam and a conversion above 7x they have today

• Sales window open 24/7 rather than business hours

• Gives more time to focus on winning the larger events and to deliver the best customer experience onsite

• As the hotel can automize the sales on their own channels they will also be listed as the first option in MeetingPackage.com and it’s over 100 affiliate partner websites

Check the video about how the integration with Opera Sales & Catering works:

We understand that this is a rather big change in the meeting venues internal sales processes and that the new logic needs to be enrolled company wide.

 I can guarantee that every day you postpone the decision of going online you are losing business and any competitive advantage you might have today. 

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 For meeting venues that don’t use any Sales & Catering solution we provide a free and easy to use extranet that you can use for your internal bookings, online bookings or even offline bookings (email, phone call etc.). This means you can get rid of any excel spreadsheets, notebooks or any solution you use today that does not cater the needs of 2018.

Learn more about our unique booking engine technology that can be embedded to your own website:

Do you agree with me with the above? If not, I am happy to be challenged and will do my best to answer any doubts you may have!

Written by Joonas Ahola, CEO & Founder