European
corporate hotel management giant HRS and German technology company Meetago have
launched a booking tool for small and midsize meetings, following HRS's acquisition
of a 25 percent stake in Meetago in March 2015.
The tool has
launched in Germany, and the United Kingdom and other European markets are scheduled
to follow by the second quarter of 2016. It is available directly via HRS or as
an integrated offering within its clients’ transient travel booking tools. It
already integrates with popular German booking company i:FAO Cytric, and the
partners are building links to Amadeus e-Travel Management and KDS.
Moving
meetings reservations online has proved challenging. HRS admitted that an
offering it introduced five years ago was little more than an online request
form, one reason why meetings and group bookings now account for no more than 5
percent of total reservations. However, Mathias Warns—HRS vice president for corporate
solutions for Europe, the Middle East and Africa—claimed the Meetago
collaboration will succeed where others have failed. “Most technology start-ups
have great tools but don’t have great content, so we will bring our content and
Meetago will bring the tool,” he said. “The key difference is the breadth we
can present. We have 450 staff managing relationships with hotels on a daily
basis.”
Warns said
HRS provides access to 300,000 hotels, of which 175,000 are independent properties,
for transient bookings and estimated that 30 percent to 40 percent “will play
in the meetings game.”
According to
Warns, 80 percent of meetings are small or midsize gatherings suited to online
booking. For the HRS/Meetago system, a booker completes an online form
specifying details like number of participants, room nights, number of meeting
rooms, catering and other requirements. The system generates a list, and the
booker selects properties from which it would like to request rates. Bookers
also can forward their terms and conditions, to which hotels agree
automatically by quoting rates.
Corporate clients pay no fee, compared with a market
average of €35, Warns said, but the hotel pays HRS a flat commission of 10 percent for meeting bookings.
HRS also will book at clients’ negotiated net hotel rates at no charge to
either client or hotel, but it will charge clients €29 per transaction if more
than 50 percent of their bookings are net.
Correction, Oct. 26, 2015: A previous version of this report stated that hotels pay HRS a flat commission of 15 percent. That figure applies to transient business. The flat rate for meetings bookings is 10 percent.