Winning crucial group business

NATIONAL REPORT – Given the rising economic uncertainty, securing a strong base of group business is essential to a hotel’s success, particularly big box properties. The group sales process has become more competitive than ever, highlighting the importance of ensuring the sales team has the right tools, and more importantly, the right pricing strategies in place.

Below are the top ten tips to favorably position your asset to win in the group segment:

1. Be the “first to market.” Ensure the sales process is streamlined and sales managers are responding quickly to all inbound leads – maximum response time should be 24 hours. Often the hotel first to respond is the property that wins the business. Timeliness is critical in the competitive landscape.
2. Build relationships. Meeting planners are more likely to buy from people they trust, which emphasizes the importance of building relationships. As group prospecting process becomes more competitive, leveraging strong relationships will allow hotels to increase repeat business, obtain referrals to other meeting planners and overall help win business over competitors. Make sure the sales team is in the field, forging relationships with new clients, connecting with existing clients and re-engaging former ones.
3. Monitor citywide/group patterns. Ensure property teams are monitoring the citywide calendar to highlight need dates early. Once identified, monitor the pace over these periods closely and leverage brand resources to generate self-contained business. The sales team should not just be reviewing convention center pace data monthly to stay aware of large events and adjust pricing accordingly, but meeting with the CVB sales teams to understand the pipeline and any changes from prior years.
4. Revenue manage meet space. Review the group block calendar or GRC and meeting space optimization reports with the sales team. Determine if groups can be shifted to open more favorable patterns for other group room blocks. If your hotel does not have a dedicated group revenue manager, controlling room blocks and confirming meeting space is fully optimized, ensure that someone is reviewing on a weekly basis. This can open conversations about underutilized space and potential ROI opportunities that can be implemented.
5. Adjust free sale restrictions. Free sale periods and meeting space minimums should be reviewed frequently with the sales team to ensure policies are not overly restrictive during need periods. These policies should reflect the booking window trends and be reduced during slow demand periods.
6. Review turndown reports. Turndown reports provide valuable insights into a hotel’s competitive disadvantages. These should be reviewed with the sales team to ensure the sales team is trained to sell against these opportunities. Understand the hotel’s weaknesses and develop concessions to offset them (i.e. discounted parking, happy hour, additional points, etc.). Lead management systems often do not give meeting planners the option to customize their reason for turning the opportunity down. If this is the case, review with the sales team to minimally understand the hotel’s weak spots anecdotally.
7. Optimize sales team structure, set goals. As economic conditions fluctuate and various industries pull back on travel, the sales team deployment should be reevaluated. Sales managers deployed to lagging sectors should be repositioned to focus on “healthy” industries. Ensure that sales goals are adjusted to properly reflect new initiatives as trends fluctuate. Develop special incentive plans for any need periods to motivate the team further.
8. Create website breakout pages. Creating breakout pages tailored to weddings, catering, or other specific event types can help catch the eye of meeting planners. Ensure photos are up to date and showcase not only the hotel’s meeting space and dining options, but specialty event set-ups. Monitor breakout pages for impressions, indicating interest, and adjust SEO and digital marketing accordingly.
9. Adjust long-term group pricing. Ensure long-term group pricing strategy considers external and internal variables such as large citywide/nationwide events (FIFA World Cup, the Olympics, large concerts, etc.) and upcoming renovations. Model rooms, design boards and other forms of collateral should be used as a sales tool to promote larger long-term ADR increases.
10. Evaluate tools to win business. There are many different tools sales teams use for both prospecting and securing group business (i.e. CVENT, Delphi, Hopskip, Knowland, etc.). Evaluate the ROI of these products to help win business – many of these can be new technology offerings. Audit sites, such as CVENT, to ensure they reflect current hotel data and are optimized – i.e., includes need dates and promotions.  Highlight creative group packages/promotions such as waived rental, double points, free upgrades, etc.

Securing group business in today’s competitive and uncertain environment requires a proactive, strategic, and relationship-driven approach. By equipping your sales team with the right tools, data, and flexibility, your property will be well-positioned to capture demand, drive revenue, and outperform the competition.

Contributed by Silvie Cohen and Julianna Saggese, asset managers, Hotel Asset Value Enhancement (hotelAVE), New York City and Providence, Rhode Island, respectively

The views and opinions expressed in this content do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Hotel Investment Today by Northstar or Northstar Travel Group and its affiliated companies.