Managing Meetings At: SunTrust Banks--Co. Leverages Transient Pricing For Small Mtgs.

Following two years of collecting basic data on meetings expenditures, Atlanta-based SunTrust Banks Inc. in 2006 plans to roll out a program to outsource large events to a meetings and incentives management company and leverage small meetings volume with its transient preferred vendors. The company already has successfully secured transient preferred hotel rates for group room blocks in its top cities, said the company's travel manager.

Maureen Blais, corporate travel manager for SunTrust, said the company in early 2006 plans to begin working with a meetings management firm and create a new internal meetings manager position. Blais estimated the company annually spends more than $10 million on meetings and events.

"In the past three years, employees have been coming to me for hotels for little meetings, large meetings and managing room blocks, but now an outside company will take care of most meetings," Blais said.

Meetings of fewer than 100 attendees still will be sourced through Blais, but the management firm will source large meetings and incentives. Blais said the management firm also might handle high-touch meetings for executives.

"You don't need to pay a meetings and incentives firm when you have me to do the basics, and I can funnel it to my transient desk. You have to utilize both," Blais said. "It depends on the level of needs you have for that meeting."

Simple meetings that only need air tickets and hotel room blocks should be funneled through SunTrust's Outtask Cliqbook online booking tool to secure a lower transaction fee, Blais said. Meetings that require more planning, however, are not a good use of a transient travel manager's time, she said.

Blais joined SunTrust in late 2002 as the company's first travel manager and began gathering data on travel expenditures. Before 2002, when Blais joined the company, administrative assistants sourced and signed contracts for meetings. Starting in 2004, data was divided into transient and group bookings and organized monthly on a spreadsheet.

"Getting the data is the primary focus and then secondary is the savings. You can't realize the savings until you get the data," she said.

Blais estimated that 80 percent of meetings volume at the company is booked with preferred vendors. Preferred vendors are evaluated on their ability to accommodate meetings in addition to transient criteria.

"This is where the big problem is with meetings. Hotel meetings people don't equate meetings spend at hotels with the room nights and the transient spend," Blais said.

Blais said she finds some hotels unreasonably attempt to charge higher room rates for groups despite the additional food and beverage revenue that SunTrust may provide.

"When you're doing a full-blown conference, that's another ball of wax, but with this type of small meeting, it's not. It should be equated. It's always going to be an argument with the meetings people and the hoteliers," she said, "but that's where the transient side brings that leverage to the table."

SunTrust already has secured preferred transient rates for groups in Atlanta, where the company can drive significant volume to preferred hotels, Blais said. Negotiations with such conference destinations as Orlando and New York are more difficult, she said.

Blais said she gathers data through her preferred hotels and travel management company.

"If the travel management company says it booked 500 rooms, and the hotel said it booked a total of 700 rooms, then I know the hotel got 200 rooms direct and I use that in my negotiations," she said.

Blais said she also tracks when a preferred hotel couldn't accommodate business, and such expenditures as food and beverage, to help leverage volume.

SunTrust also negotiates for reduced cancellation and attrition fees at preferred hotels, especially in Atlanta, where properties can be assured of steady business, she said.

"Give me something that says that as long as I book within the next six months we can bring those fees down. That's what you have to do and that's the goal in supporting your preferred supplier," she said.

Though the company doesn't have an overall savings goal for meetings and events, the use of the management company could yield savings of more than 10 percent on large meetings, she said.

"You have to categorize large and small meetings separately because there are different savings." Blais said. "Big meetings could yield 10 percent or 20 percent because you're consolidating."

Next year, SunTrust will use separate Cliqbook sites for online booking of transient and group travel to help separate air volume, she said.

"That is our goal, to be able to see what the difference is in transient air and hotel and group," she said. "I can't even say how important it is because it took me three years to get the company to the point to look at this spend, and now we're there. I just need to pass it off on a director of meetings, and she'll handle that group."

Blais also has organized focus groups representing each of SunTrust's five major divisions to test meetings technology and help choose a management provider.

"All key lines of business had a spokesperson there and saw everything that was going on," she said. "They were looking for capabilities and technology."

The process of gathering feedback from focus groups and drafting an request for proposals for a meetings management company took a year to carry out, Blais said.

"If you want a successful program, you have to get the buy-in from your users at the very beginning," she said. "A combination of e-tools and the human person calling around and knowing your business is what we're looking for, and I think we found it."

Blais declined to name the management company that SunTrust chose, as the contract is not yet final, but said it was a meetings management company and not a meetings technology company.

Another goal for next year is to increase compliance with the approved meetings policy and adoption of the management company to 50 percent across the company, Blais said. Initially, about one-third of SunTrust's businesses are expected to use the external management company. Internal education is aimed to increase adoption rates.

"At the end of 2007, it has to be 100 percent," Blais said.