Hilton Worldwide recently launched an online portal for
booking and managing meetings, including a tool for submitting electronic
requests for proposals.
The Connect at Hilton Worldwide portal lets planners search
for rooms and meeting space across Hilton's brands globally. Planners can
filter searches by desired amenities—Internet access, restaurants or golf
courses, for example—and indicate technology or food and beverage needs. The tool
generates a list of properties that meet a planner's criteria and enables them to
submit pricing requests.
The portal includes features tailored to both small and
large meetings. Powered by online RFP provider SpeedRFP, Connect Plus lets
planners submit RFPs to 115 of the company's largest hotels in the Americas,
each with at least 450 rooms or 40,000 square feet of meeting space.
"The meeting side is becoming more and more
sophisticated in providing the RFP tools, but it's not just about sourcing the
pricing," said Mark Komine, senior vice president and head of sales for
Hilton Worldwide in the Americas. "With SpeedRFP, it doesn't just attach
the meeting specs but also provides dashboards, so they can see where they are
in different scenarios and send it back to multiple hotels."
As hotel companies contend with a deluge of electronic RFPs,
many of which do not lead to eventual business, the tool also "provides
great notifications to salespeople without clogging up systems" and lets
hotels "respond faster with more robust information," Komine said.
For small meetings, the portal features Meetings Simplified,
through which planners for can search by brand and inquire about bundled and
per-person pricing. Basic pricing includes such amenities as a meeting room,
Wi-Fi, non-alcoholic beverage services and a flip chart and markers.
"Meetings is becoming a hotter topic for this group,” Komine
said of delegates attending the Global Business Travel Association's convention
in San Diego this week. "The meetings industry was bifurcated, and this
audience years ago was not really focused on meetings, but there have been
shifts."