Reporter's Notebook: Third Parties Point To Seller's Market Slowdown

The lodging industry is starting to turn back to a buyer's market for groups, according to executives of two meetings-industry third parties, during an educational session at the National Business Travel Association's International Convention & Exposition in Boston last month.

Peter Moen, vice president of global business development for Carlson Marketing Worldwide, said that he has seen the trend on the group side since the beginning of this year, and that hotels are "a little more hungry for business" than before.

"Since about the early first quarter of this year, we've seen a significant change from hotels to indicate that we are actually turning a corner toward more of a buyer's market," Moen said. "Our site searches come back with a lot more availability than they did over the last couple of years. We're getting contacted by the hotels a lot more frequently about available space a lot more than we used to. On the group side, we're seeing a very significant trend that's been ongoing since the early part of this year."

"Lately, we've started to see softening of the economy and a lot of companies cutting back on travel dollars. That's going to create another perfect storm," said Experient executive vice president and chief customer officer Brad Weaber. "As well, you have the multiple hotel inventories coming on board. Predictions right now are looking at late '08 for seeing a shift not only in occupancy percentages, but also in average daily rate."

The relationship between meetings and procurement is a lot like a marriage, said Kari Knoll Kesler, global manager of Honeywell Meeting Solutions in an education session at Meeting Professionals International's World Education Congress in Montreal late last month.

Travel management, meetings management and procurement often speak in different languages and have conflicting viewpoints of meetings. Kesler identified five concepts to optimize a company's investment in meetings and work with key stakeholders, including procurement.

The first is to become engaged and involved with senior management, procurement and travel management partners and stakeholders, which, she said, should be a lengthy process. Next is to exchange ideas, data and knowledge. Emulate the success of other companies by implementing processes that work and by networking, she said. After that, educate other departments about the meetings program.

When the first four stages are completed, the company will have a program in place for the final stage, where the marriage between meetings and procurement will be complete.

Kesler also said that "the number-one thing companies do wrong when they try to put an strategic meetings management program in place is to write it, shoot it out and say, 'Do it.' It will fail every single time."

StarCite and online travel management company Orbitz announced a strategic alliance during the NBTA conference in Boston. StarCite users will be able to book travel directly from the StarCite's Attendee Management application to Orbitz for Business or Travelport for Business. The feature is expected to be available to customers in early 2008.

Chauffeured transportation firm BostonCoach released the results of a survey at MPI's WEC last month, revealing that meeting planners ranked venue and production as the most important factors for the success of an event. Venue, hotel and production also received the most amount of lead time. Food received the highest percentage of the budget, with 24 percent. Next came hotel at 17 percent and venue at 15 percent of the budget. The online survey consisted of 131 meeting planners, event organizers and travel managers.

MPI at the WEC announced the planned October opening of an Asia/Pacific office in Singapore. The selection of Singapore for "aims at capitalizing on its central location," said Angie Pfeifer, chairwoman of MPI's international board of directors. Initially, the office will be operated by one person.