Hotel groups: winning group business with location data

Hotel groups win more MICE group business when they can show a meeting planner, with numbers, why their city is a good place for this particular group to meet: what the journeys cost, how much CO2 they cause and how long attendees travel door to door. When attendees travel less, more of the event budget is left for the hotel: the room block, the dinner, the next meeting. And when you offer location optimisation to your members and on your own website, you are part of the decision before the request for proposal is written.

This article is for conference hotel sales and MICE teams at hotel groups. It explains why the journey belongs in your sales argument, how to show a group that your city is the right choice, how to offer location optimisation in your own channels, and how to keep the numbers credible with corporate clients.

Why the journey belongs in your sales argument

Every meeting has one budget, and travel and the hotel draw from it. For a group with attendees from several countries, the flights and trains can be a large share of the total. A planner who chooses a city that is expensive to reach has less left for everything that happens at your property: rooms, meeting space, food and beverage, the side programme.

Hotel sales traditionally competes on what happens inside the building: rates, rooms, capacity, service. Those matter, but they are decided after the city. The decision with the largest effect on the total budget is often made earlier, and usually without the hotel in the room. If you can show that your location saves the group money and time on the way there, you are arguing on the same level as the planner's own priorities, not only on rate.

There is a second reason. Corporate clients increasingly have to report the emissions of business travel, and many have climate targets for it. A hotel that can show the CO2 of the journeys to its location gives the planner something useful for that conversation, rather than a general sustainability statement.

Showing a group why your city is the best place to meet

The core tool is a ranking of candidate cities for one real group. With the Meeting Place Finder, the input is the attendees' origins with head counts: a city, postcode or airport per group, without names. Every candidate city is ranked by travel cost, CO2 and door-to-door travel time, using real schedules and fares from global booking systems for flights and routing services for rail, bus and car.

For a hotel group, the candidate cities are the cities where you have properties. That turns a generic question into a concrete one: for this group's real attendee list, which of our cities and hotels is the best place to meet?

A practical flow for your sales team:

1. Ask for the origins with the enquiry. Head counts per office, city or airport are enough, and they are not personal data. Many planners have them in their registration data from the last event.

2. Rank your cities. Include every destination in your portfolio that has suitable capacity, plus the city the planner has in mind if it is not one of yours.

3. Compare dates if they are open. You can compare up to three dates, each as its own calculation. Comparing dates helps you steer a group towards dates when your property can offer better conditions.

4. Present the ranking with a recommendation. Show the view that matches the client's goal: maximum productivity, minimum CO2 or lowest ticket cost. Show the travel details for every origin, so the fairness question is answered before it comes up.

5. Hand over the report. The planner gets a savings report for purchasing and data for Scope 3 reporting, as PDF or CSV.

What if your city does not come first? Say so, and show the gap. Often a second-ranked city is close behind the first, and the difference is smaller than the advantage your property offers in capacity, rate or experience. Sometimes another of your own properties ranks higher, and you can redirect the group within your portfolio instead of losing it. An honest comparison is what makes the next one believable.

Location optimisation for your members and on your website

The strongest position is to be present before the planner has a shortlist. Two channels work well for hotel groups:

• Your meetings search. Add a "where should we meet?" step to the group and meetings booking on your website, in your brand. A planner enters where the attendees come from and sees which of your locations suits the group best. This works with white label and API.

• Your loyalty and business members. Offer the optimisation as a member benefit for the companies that already book with you. It gives your account managers a reason to talk about the next meeting early.

In both cases the planner gets a useful answer, and the answer leads to your properties. That is a different starting point from responding to a request for proposal that is already gone out to many hotels.

Numbers that hold up with corporate clients

A location argument only works if the client's purchasing and sustainability teams accept the numbers. The CO2 is calculated with atmosfair data according to the VDR standard and aligned with the GHG Protocol for Scope 3 category 6 (business travel), with the additional warming effect of flights at altitude shown. Travel cost uses real fares, and a client's travel policy, travel classes and negotiated rates can be applied. Our article on Scope 3 category 6 explains how meeting travel is reported.

Lead with the hard savings. That is what moves a planner and their purchasing team first; the CO2 figure strengthens the case. For a sense of scale: in our case study with a DAX-listed company, 219 meetings with 5,652 participants avoided about 1,170 t CO2 and saved over EUR 1M in travel spend. That is roughly EUR 188 in travel cost and about 0.207 t CO2 per participant, our estimate from the totals. Each group is different, but these are the kinds of amounts that can shift from the journey to the stay.

What a calculation costs

One calculation covers one event on one date and any number of cities, at one price, for all the cities in your portfolio you want to compare; each further date is its own calculation. Participants are priced in bands, like tax brackets: from participant 101, every additional participant costs less. There is no base fee. Our sales team sends you the price for your event. More on how pricing works: credits and prices.

If you plan to use location data in your sales process regularly, or across many properties, a subscription is cheaper than single calculations. Talk to us about what fits your meetings business. More on how hotel groups work with Convien is on our hospitality page.

FAQ

Does the ranking favour our hotels?

No. The ranking is based on the travel of the attendees and is the same for every candidate city. You decide which cities to compare, usually those where you have properties, so the result shows which of them suits the group best.

What do we need from the meeting planner?

Only the origins of the attendees with head counts, as a city, postcode or airport per group. No names or personal data.

Can we offer this on our own website?

Yes. With white label and API, the location step can be part of your meetings search, in your brand, and you can offer it to your members.

How is the CO2 of the journeys calculated?

With atmosfair data according to the VDR standard, aligned with the GHG Protocol for Scope 3 category 6 (business travel), including the additional warming effect of flights at altitude.

Talk to us about your meetings business

If you want to see how the location argument works for your properties, book a demo and bring a recent group enquiry. Or request a free trial for a small event of up to 10 attendees and five cities.