The managed travel and meetings industry seems to be getting on the same page
about the concept of a "simple" meeting—and defining it: It requires
a meeting space, it's typically under 50 participants, it has easily replicable
requirements and it might require sleeping rooms. According to a study produced
by the Global Business Travel Association and Meeting Professionals
International, it's also a big chunk of an organization's total number of
meetings. How much, however, is hard to say.
The 408 travel managers and meetings professionals who
responded to the GBTA/MPI survey estimated that simple meetings represent half
their organizations' total meetings volume—in terms of number, not total spend. Conventional
industry wisdom sets that percentage somewhat higher, at perhaps 70 percent. "The challenge is that most companies just don't know,"
said HRS VP of meetings and groups Abbie Michaelson. "They can't gather
all the data from sales, marketing, [HR]—[from] all the divisions
that have their own budgets and may have put these small meetings on a
corporate card. There are likely a lot more."
That lack of visibility largely is due to the ways in which simple
meetings are sourced. According to the study, 71 percent of respondents had corporate
policies guiding the shopping and booking process for simple meetings. Among that
group, two-thirds were required to compare multiple bids before placing their
business. A much smaller percentage, however, had tools or partnerships in
place to manage that process.
Fifty-six percent of respondents used a company preferred meetings
channel for venue shopping. Those channels included online meeting platforms,
specialized venue-sourcing partners or full-service meetings management partners.
The channels did not include a corporate transient online booking tool or
travel management company or any direct or indirect consumer channels like hotel
websites or consumer online booking tools. Participation in managed
channels dropped to 48 percent when making the booking, indicating that 8
percent opted out of their managed pathways, likely to book directly with a venue
after the selection process and thus losing any benefit of automated or standardized data
capture.
Plus, 44 percent of respondents never had those tools or
partnerships in the first place. Among this group, 77 percent defaulted to consumer
channels to shop and book venues for simple meetings.
Study authors pointed to obvious problems that arise from
using consumer channels for sourcing any type of corporate meeting, whether simple
or complex. There's difficulty in comparison shopping, risk in using
nonpreferred or unvetted venues and data loss that impedes corporate duty of care
and visibility into meetings volume and spend that could help
forge deeper supplier partnerships.
Plenty of solutions providers are keying into this segment and
helping define the concept of the simple meeting as a more commoditized, as opposed to customized, product. In addition to survey sponsor HRS, other players include Breather,
Bizly, Groupize and MeetingsBooker. Most offer comparison shopping, digital RFP platform, data capture.
reporting and negotiation documentation between the prospective venues
and the meeting organizer. Some offer their own designed and serviced
meeting spaces. A few providers offer instant booking inventory or packages in
hotel meeting spaces and offsite venues, which could negatively impact requirements to source competing bids. Some integrate corporate payment solutions to help companies further control
the purse strings and lock in spend data. Whatever the flavor, these providers
are positioning themselves as alternatives specifically configured for simple
meetings, eschewing more established players like Cvent or Aventri, formerly Etouches as over-engineered for the segment.
To that last point, fewer than a quarter of survey
respondents used an online RFP tool for simple meetings sourcing and buying. An
additional 12 percent said their companies utilize such a platform but only for
larger, more complex meetings and events. Fifteen percent have no meetings tool, but their companies plan to introduce one in the
next 12 months. The survey did not ask what type of meetings platform
respondents were using or what they would be introducing. Therefore,
it provided no indication of whether specialized simple meetings platforms are
gaining traction.
It does offer insights, however, into satisfaction rates
among respondents who have some kind of meetings platform in place. "It comes
to back to conversations I've had many times," said Michaelson: "They say, 'Even if I was interested in
the platform, I wouldn't get adoption.' It's critical to note that 72 percent of
respondents who use a meetings sourcing platform for simple meetings prefer this channel to any other. That's a vast majority, and it should signal
an opportunity to put some rigor and consistency around how corporates are
managing this segment."