Group reservations technology firm Passkey in
the next 60 days plans to launch a mobile booking platform, which would be the
latest in a series of technological developments in a year that has seen the
company more than double its transaction numbers, according to president and
CEO Greg Pesik.
Passkey "gives attendees the same booking
experience at a hotel as if they were transient guest" through its
GroupMax software-as-a-service tool, Pesik claimed during an interview with BTN. Last month, Dolce Hotels and
Resorts, which operates 26 upscale properties in North America and Europe,
became the latest hotel chain to introduce GroupMax for meetings clients.
Dolce, long a major supplier in the conference center industry, indicated that
65 percent of its bookings are group business. Other hotel companies using the
technology include Crowne Plaza in the United States, Hyatt in North America,
Fairmont worldwide and Marriott at roughly 100 of its biggest-selling meetings
properties.
The mobile booking facility would follow the
April introduction of mobile versions of Passkey dashboards for planners to
review booking progress. In June, it launched dedicated social networking sites
that planners can set up for delegates to communicate with each other before,
during and after a meeting. Last month, it added the ability to send agendas to
meeting delegates via mobile apps.
Pesik said Passkey is on course to process 127
percent more meetings bookings in 2010 than in 2009, taking the amount of spend
transacted through its booking tools to approximately $2 billion, representing
5 million room nights. He also said the number of corporate meeting planners
using Passkey this year would rise 58 percent to around 10,000.
According to Pesik, the foundations for this
year's significant growth were laid in 2009 when Passkey introduced two key
enhancements to its product. The first was a PCI-secure room list, meaning
delegates could submit card details securely as part of their booking. The second
was the creation of the online dashboards. "It gives them full visibility
of the pick-up of bookings for the meeting, and they can map that against
progress at the same stage for previous events," Pesik explained.
"Planners can have the same process from Dolce in Europe to the Hyatt in
Chicago and Mandarin Oriental in Singapore."
Although hotels and convention bureaus are its
principal customers, Passkey has also sold licenses for GroupMax directly to
meeting planners. Corporate clients include Roche, Harley-Davidson and Computer
Associates. "In all cases they have come to us as a result of using our
technology and wanting to bring it in-house," he said. "We haven't
actively marketed to them."