Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide on April 27 announced new online meeting space booking capabilities to book single-day meetings of up to 25 attendees. The service, called Meetings in a Moment, allows buyers to purchase meeting space, food and beverage and audiovisual services online. Currently, 33 hotel properties in Atlanta, Chicago, New York, Florida and New England participate, but Starwood product manager Scott Reynolds said the service will expand to approximately 80 properties in major cities by year-end.
The Starwood move is similar, but not identical, to Hyatt Hotels Corp.'s four-year-old online meeting space booking capability
(Meetings Today, Aug. 13, 2001). Starwood, however, allows buyers to book meeting space online without booking any guest room nights. Hyatt does not.
Starwood's tool does not allow meeting buyers to contract group guest room blocks, although Reynolds said that feature might be added in the future. The tool also has a booking window of up to 30 days prior to the event and limits group size to 25 attendees. Reynolds said those parameters may change, and a future tool also may allow buyers to bundle multiple meetings or adopt a customized corporate site with the Starwood search tool loaded with pre-negotiated corporate rates. Currently, discounts for small meetings booked online can be added during the billing phase, but must be negotiated directly with the hotel, he said.
"We're basing the next phase of development on feedback that we get both from corporate clients and individual users of the site," Reynolds said.
Though several meeting buyers were pleased to hear of the new technological developments, they also said retaining control over contracts and spend data is essential in booking any meeting space, regardless of size or booking mechanism.
Michele Snock, manager of global meeting services for Cisco Systems Inc.'s Americas operations, said the new Starwood online feature has been useful in creating a "self-service model" for the 650 small, ad hoc meetings the company holds each year.
The Cisco central meeting planning department tightly controls spending, Snock said, but the department has begun to look for opportunities to outsource or give control over meeting logistics to stakeholders
(Meetings Today, Feb. 7). The Starwood tool allows Cisco meeting planners to retain control over sourcing while meeting stakeholders make their own decisions on food and beverage, audiovisual and meeting space requirements. Snock said she would like to see Starwood add more payment options to the tool.
"We would like to add direct billing to an American Express card if the client requests a meeting there," Snock said. "Then, they don't have to deal with paying for it. We just get it charged back to our department."
The Starwood tool follows the industry maxim that "the easier you are to do business with, the more business you will get," Snock said. Small, two-hour meetings that require minimal audiovisual and catering services are too simple to spend valuable working hours sourcing, she said.
"If Starwood streamlines things and it makes it easier for us to do business with them, then that's what we're looking for," Snock said. "We're looking for all our partners to be an extension of our team and make our processes easier."
Jill Goldner, director of travel and meeting services for Manhattan Beach, Calif.-based footwear manufacturer Skechers USA Inc., said she has heard of Starwood's new online tool, but doesn't plan on using it to book meeting space.
"I like to call the properties and work with them directly," Goldner said. "I'm more comfortable talking to them. I'm not confident that an online tool will get the job done and all the information I need to correspond to them with our group's needs."
Although booking meeting space through a hotel Web site can make planning ad hoc meetings easier, corporations could lose control over a significant portion of their meeting spend, said Jeff Rasco, president of Texas-based Attendee Management Inc. and a principal in Tech3 Partners Consulting. "A lot of your waste and slippage are in those smaller meetings," Rasco said.
Corporations already face a difficult task in tracking how much they spend on small meetings that do not require air travel or hotel room nights, he said, and meeting buyers who choose to use an online tool to book meeting space should ensure that spending data is tracked through a central source.
An online meeting space booking tool that encourages company employees to book hotel space without a centralized process actually goes against industry trends of consolidation and leveraging total meetings spend, Rasco said. "A lot of organizations would frown on that because it's letting that last bit of control slip away," he said.
Fred Shea, Hyatt's vice president of sales operations, said Hyatt customers can book their meetings entirely online through the chain's E-mmediate Meetings tool, but many buyers visit the site to find price and availability information.
"We book a lot of business directly, but we also know that people will go through the process, get all the basic information and then pick up the phone and talk directly to the hotel," Shea said.
The tool has proven valuable to corporate meeting buyers, Shea said, and Hyatt is considering expanding the program to larger meetings with longer lead times. The program allows buyers to reserve five to 100 guest rooms and meeting space up to six months in advance at any Hyatt hotel in the United States, Canada and the Caribbean.
Booking through the tool has been most popular with repeat customers and buyers who know at which property they want to have their meeting, Shea said.
Additionally, Hyatt in January 2003 partnered with Philadelphia-based meetings technology company StarCite Inc. to offer online request for proposals response tools, promising availability and a rate quote within one minute.