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Finally! ... Real-time Housing InformationNew technology applications can yield dramatic reductions in both process expense and transaction times.By E.J. Siwek, CMPThe processing of housing information is one market niche that continues to make significant strides, thanks to the Internet, access to the World Wide Web, and the growing open architecture of information systems servicing the housing segment. With more robust applications, designed to manage varied complexities, meeting planners have wider options for contracted room inventories. In the past, planners faced major obstacles in working with citywide and multi-property room blocks, as well as gaining access to room block data after a reservation cut-off date. The results: less than optimal pick-up rates and possibly higher attrition charges. At the same time, facilities lost room nights that could have been released for transient business. At best, older technologies provided a lose-lose scenario. Today, transacting housing information is open to data entry, data sharing, and data warehousing by facilities, service bureaus, individual registrants, and meeting professionals. The results: dramatic reductions in both process expense and transaction times. The complexities of processing online housing details include credit card validations, managing varying rate structures for attendees and their guests, processing cancellations and up-to-the-minute changes, assessing attrition fees, and enforcing a set of pre-determined business rules that allow multiple layers of user access. With state-of-the-art applications, meeting professionals can better manage room blocks, processing in real-time and potentially recapturing as much as 20 percent of room night credits lost through the inefficiencies of older technologies. As an added value, meeting attendees can enter confidential information and room preferences, shop for best rates, and receive instant transaction confirmation through the World Wide Web. The product types for handling housing transactions divide into three basic categories: Market Players Passkey was founded in 1996. Its solution employs back-end technologies that allow for tracking and management of reservations from a range of sources, including traditional service bureau processing of mail, call-in, and fax-back reservations, as well as those submitted online. The secured, centralized database design provides data warehousing that enables the tracking of user profiles. This reduces data entry time and provides individual transaction data. To date, more than 2,000 hotels in 90 cities are Passkey-enabled, and more than 1 million reservation transactions have been processed through the system. Traditional clients include convention and visitor bureaus, third-party services such as Par Avion and Conferon, travel agencies, trade show managers, and corporate and association planners who handle their own group housing needs. Passkey’s latest product, HotelDirectTM, is a hotel-facing technology for managing single-property meetings. It lets hotels share an event’s housing data with planners. HotelDirect is the first technology to allow hotels to create on-the-fly Web reservation pages for any event that can be branded jointly by planner and hotel. Through the use of a shared standard, planners or housing managers that choose a Passkey-enabled housing supplier have access to real-time reports and can provide attendees with the ability to shop for hotels based on price, location, or brand. Outputs include trend analysis reports, accurate histories, and property-level room inventory reports. The system is secure and scaleable regardless of the event size and demand on room inventory. Passkey provides several products for the convention housing business that address individual processing needs ranging from convention and visitor bureaus to trade show managers, third-party providers, and others. b-there.com Founded in 1997, b-there.com provides a comprehensive solution set that includes housing block management as one of its integrated modules. The housing module allows online individual reservations through a customized Web site designed by the planner or housing manager. The site’s design allows attendees to view basic information on available hotels contracted by the planner. Upon selecting their choice, attendees can instantly secure a reservation. At this time, approximately 1,000 properties can accept electronic data transfers from planners using b-there.com’s housing module. By using this system, attendees can take advantage of an integrated process that includes event registration, travel planning, and reservations, along with housing needs. Event411.com Housing ManagerSM, a module integrated with the patent-pending PremierPlannerTM from Event411.com, provides planners the ability to not only manage their event housing, but tie that ability to event registration, attendee profiling, and management and communications solutions. This means planners can manage events with single blocks and properties, as well as those with multiple blocks and sub-blocks at multiple properties. Housing Manager gives planners the power to take full control of their housing by restricting blocks, sub-blocks, and hotels to certain types of attendees, and setting payment and cancellation options. Since Housing Manager is Web-based, planners can access real-time data to control bookings and attrition. A flexible reporting system lets them pull rooming lists, pick-up reports, and duplicate lists. Housing Manager also can set automatic notifications to inform planners of booking progress and to modify inventory in real-time. Planners also can allow or restrict hotels from setting up their own information and pulling rooming lists. Housing Manager is designed to interface with other third-party applications specializing in housing. For example, in the case of real-time bookings into Hyatt hotels (and a few other smaller hotels), Event411.com provides real-time group booking capabilities using the industry’s first XML group booking interface via Pegasus. As part of PremierPlanner, Housing Manager gives attendees the ability to book their housing while registering for the event, ensuring the accuracy and integrity of the event’s room blocks. Attendees can view room types and hotels, compare them on the basis of room availability, price, amenities, and policies, and reserve their housing online. If permitted by planners, attendees can view and modify their reservations after booking. And attendees can choose how they wish to be notified of their confirmation: via fax or e-mail. For the property, Housing Manager can save time and eliminate the headache associated with the rapid pace of data change in group housing. By using the hotel interface in Housing Manager, the property can upload images, enter marketing and policy text, and position the property to get attendee bookings. Reservation managers can pull reports that show real-time pick-up and block information, as well as receive booking requests as attendees make them. The property always will be in sync with the group. Housing Manager uses the Pegasus interface to communicate bookings and confirmations directly to a property’s CRS, similar to a Passkey-enabled property. And it gives the property the tools it needs to obtain and manage bookings for event attendees. International Conference Management Hotel Manager 5.1 from International Conference Management will help a planner manage single property blocks as well as citywide inventories. In addition, multiple bookings per guest and multiple events can be handled simultaneously. Sub-blocks also can be tracked, and select business rules are available for use by the housing coordinator. The product integrates with its companion, Registration Manager, resulting in reduced data entry of attendee information and shared accounting ledgers and reports. The diagram outlined above illustrates how ICM’s products can share data between a suite of
products and among added-value vendors. (Source: www.conference.com) WynTrac is one of those vying for market position in online reservations. Since its founding a few years ago, its product has processed more than 1 million transactions. The service, which employs a front-end customized Web site for planners, allows planners to use a series of self-guided templates to build a meeting Web site. By working through a series of questions regarding meeting dates, rooms, and rates, planners can define basic business rules. The result: a customized front-end Web site. After the site design is complete, meeting participants are encouraged to use a link e-mailed to them to reserve their room or to log onto the organization’s Web site, depending on how the planner chose to set up the housing system. The data can be imported into a facility’s Property Management System in order to reduce re-keying. Advanced planning with the facility is essential to make certain that the data is formatted correctly for a clean import. In addition, management after cut-of dates needs to be carefully coordinated. E.J. Siwek is president and founder of Flashpoint Technologies, LLC. Forward your questions about technology to him at ej@flashpointtech.com. CONVENE - September 2001 - Meeting Technology©2001 Professional Convention Management Association |
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