Meetings technology firm Worktopia late last month announced a new version of its meeting space booking tool that allows clients to search and book space, audiovisual services and catering for small meetings online, along with a corporate edition of the tool that lets clients load preferred meeting suppliers and rates.
Worktopia has linked its Universal Meeting Solution, which also populates attendee passenger name records into global distribution systems, with Sabre and Travelport GDSs and the TripManager and GetThere online booking tools
(BTNonline, May 12), which allows clients to book guest rooms. Worktopia receives a flat percentage commission from properties and also a booking fee from corporate edition users.
"It's really the next generation for meetings management for small meetings," said Worktopia CEO John Arenas at the National Business Travel Association International Convention and Exposition in Los Angeles. "Before, people would come through the system and search for meeting space, find that it's available, like the price and then have to go offline to book the group room nights."
Worktopia offers a portfolio of more than 2,000 properties with live availability and pricing, with preloaded pricing and day-meeting packages. "Our overall strategy has been to enable the marketplace to complete transactions online," Arenas said. "There's no longer a reason to take a simple buying process offline."
Meetings technology company StarCite also offers searching and booking via its Small Meetings Solution, and senior vice president of business development Bob Bennett theorized that hotels will become more open to such technology in the future. "We'll see over time that hotels are going to start small," Bennett said. "As this trend picks up, they'll be more interested in what distribution channels deliver and which ones have value."
Industry consultants said small meetings would best fit Worktopia's offerings. "I'm sure that for certain kinds of meetings, where you can just plug some data in and have the system search through a database, it has a potential to work," said Jeff Rasco, president of Attendee Management Inc.
Corbin Ball, president of Bellingham, Wash.-based Corbin Ball Associates, added, "It's definitely going to be for smaller meetings. It's going to be a while, if ever, before big, complex meetings go this way."