Federal government meeting planners from March through June sourced about 100 events through a new FedRooms Groups and Meetings electronic process powered by Cvent. It's a small number of meetings for the world's largest managed travel program, but the results are "more than we expected in a very soft rollout with no announcement or marketing," U.S. General Services Administration lodging programs manager Rick Freda told Management.travelthis month.
Operated by Carlson Wagonlit Travel/Sato Travel, the GSA-managed FedRooms program provides negotiated rates at or below per diem for federal travelers at more than 11,000 hotels worldwide. Last fall, GSA and CWT announcedplans to add a meetings portal and sourcing component to FedRooms as the government attempts to better track and control its unknown meeting volume.
The duo talked about pilot testing the selected technology with a couple agencies. "But when the actual technology was contracted, we decided to do a soft launch open to all federal agencies to gather intelligence and data to make quick changes," Freda said. Officials were concerned that limited testing could "limit opportunities to quickly improve" the product.
"When you roll out major technology like this, you want it to work. We wanted to flush out technical glitches and get feedback from hotels," he said of the implementation plan. "The beauty of our vendor selecting Cvent is that they pretty much had an off-the-shelf solution that was no-cost; 95 percent of our hotels already had accounts and ones who rapidly deployed."
Cvent "made no modifications to the Cvent Supplier Network" to accommodate the FedRooms program expansion, according to Cvent client services director Scott Castleman. Functionality and databases were already developed to serve "major planning firms," corporations and other government agencies. The U.S. Treasury uses Cvent's Supplier Network to source meetings, he added. Treasury, the U.S. Postal Service and a number of other government agencies and contractors use Cvent's event registration tools as the tech firm is an approved government vendor.
"Cvent was able to quickly step in and provide both a platform and sourcing best practices expertise for a very aggressive launch timeline," Castleman added. Now, the Cvent team "is very focused on the FedRooms' vision of attracting the sizable U.S. government groups and meetings spending onto a better sourcing process."
Leads Sent To Average Of 20.4 Hotels
Thus far, the expansion to meetings is "going well," Freda said. About 94 meeting leads were sent to 1,918 hotels, or about 20.4 properties per lead from March 1 through mid-June, Freda said. Of those, 20 meetings were booked, 40 were pending and the rest were cancelled or postponed, he added. The average meeting request was for 50 to 100 attendees.
From the FedRooms Web site, government planners access an electronic meetings request for proposals. As many as 80 questions might be listed to help planners specify the size, scope, level of attendees, dates, geographic preferences, catering, audio-visual and unique needs to accomplish a meeting objective. FedRooms staffers best match the size and type of property--provided it is part of the FedRooms program--with a meeting's purpose, attendees and tone. The eRFP is then routed to FedRooms which compares the requirements to the sleeping and meeting space listed for more than 11,000 hotels that participate in FedRooms.
"Meeting requirements go out to all FedRooms hotels that have the ability to accommodate the meeting," Freda said. Hotels are asked to respond with availability and commissionable pricing information within 48 hours, "which most do quickly because they are partnering with Cvent."
The FedRooms program requires participating hotels to quote sleeping room rates for meetings "at or below per diem," and detail any other costs for room rental, audio-visual or catering, Freda said. Federal per diem rules permit government agencies to pay as much as 25 percent more than per diem for meetings. However, Freda said, hotels thus far have provided equivalent or lower rates. "We're not providing that [premium pricing] option at this point," he added.
FedRooms employees within three or four days compile all responses on a "comprehensive spreadsheet to more easily compare all the available hotels' pricing and options," Freda said.
"Other than the agency name, the hotels don't have the meeting planner contact information, which cuts down on a lot of conversations via phone and email," Freda said. "We know it saves our government meeting planners time, money and energy because they're not being contacted by many, many hotels. It's a more efficient way to conduct their market research. We're just trying to strengthen it and broadcast it once we're comfortable with the way it works," Freda said.
Armed with availability and rates, it is then up to each planner or their agency's contracting officer or procurement policies to determine how to proceed to contract space, Freda said. Various federal procurement approaches prompted GSA and FedRooms to structure the Groups and Meetings program as market research rather than a procurement exercise.
GSA, FedRooms/CWT and Cvent officials in coming weeks plan to study meeting RFPs and booking trends to further refine the program. Freda also wants to analyze pricing and savings opportunities of the new process. The trio also expect to "look at the first six months, any issues and corrections, and start to discuss marketing opportunities for the start of fiscal year 2011" that begins in October, he added.
Freda has no estimate on how much the government and its agencies actually spend on meetings. "I wish we knew! That data is very elusive. Part of our strategy is to gather better data and strategically source our meetings," Freda said.
The U.S. government spends more than $2 billion a year on lodging. Federal travelers book about $1.2 billion worth of room night volume through FedRooms, according to GSA. Of the total, 56 percent contact the hotel directly to book a reservation, 18 percent book via the government's online booking site, 10 percent each through a travel management company or FedRooms.com, and 6 percent book via hotels' online websites, according to a presentation Freda delivered at a recent government travel event. In a corporate best practice model, Freda said 54 percent of hotel reservations are made via the preferred online booking tools, 31 percent via a TMC and 4 percent contact the hotel directly.