Hospitality management technology provider Lanyon last month
entered the meeting planning business with the launch of the Lanyon Meeting
& Event Management tool, which it said enables full planning with
connectivity to its hospitality sourcing and reporting system. Long a player in
requests for proposals and other aspects of transient hotel program management,
Lanyon recently has broadened its focus to offer Total Hospitality Spend
Management, of which meetings is a core part, said chief commercial officer
Michael Boult.
"The ability to manage meetings online is a hard thing
to do—probably harder than any other process in travel," Boult said. "If
you're a professional planner, you get it, but that's only a percentage of the
market. The occasional planner is the majority of the market, and they have
found it too difficult."
The tool enables planners to request a meeting, manage
attendees and build and launch registration sites. The tool interfaces with
Lanyon's supplier-sourcing suite, which enables online RFPs, negotiation and
contracting.
Boult said clients would be able to preload meetings policy
and "once that request goes to whoever does the sourcing for you, it's
preconfigured with your preferreds and all your negotiated rates."
With the new module comes a new pricing model. "Before,
it was a per-attendee registration cost," Boult said. "Now, we're
saying there's no cost for attendee management." Clients would be billed
based on the percentage of spend managed through the tool, he said.
Though he would not disclose specific pricing, Boult said it
would be "a low percentage—basis points," as opposed to whole
numbers.
This report originally
appeared in the Sept. 6, 2010, issue of Business Travel News.