Meetingsbooker.com has sped up its instant-book process, simplified the group accommodation booking channel and redesigned the mobile experience to be more responsive. Further, enterprise corporate clients now can push data for reporting to a range of business travel intelligence platforms via an application programming interface. According to Meetingsbooker.com founder and CEO Ciaran Delaney, the biggest difference in the platform's recent upgrade, however, is that users can switch more easily from instant booking to an RFP process. Planners typically use an RFP when accommodations are involved and when the number of attendees reaches 40, he added. For RFPs, the planner can select as many as 10 venues, though they tend to choose five, he said. Meetingsbooker.com then sends each of the venues the event's requirements, and the suppliers bid on the Meetingsbooker.com platform.
Meetings Sourcing Trends
Nonhotel venues have led the way in listing meeting space online, Delaney told BTN during the Global Business Travel Association conference this month, but "more and more hotel groups now are looking at the opportunity to sell their spaces online. That's a big change." Indeed, this week, four major hotel companies invested a total of $50 million in online meetings platform Groups360. He said larger organizations are realizing that a significant number of corporate meetings—GBTA estimates as many as 50 percent, said Delaney—are simple meetings, and these expenditures are not being tracked. More companies are working with solutions like Meetingsbooker.com in order to get their hands around that spend, he said. "Companies are looking to actively solve this."
Delaney also said hourly bookings have grown; this segment accounts for 20 percent of the platform's bookings. "With about 50 percent of [overall] bookings, the meeting is taking place within a week," he said. "It's very much a new way of business, [with people] organizing travel and their business week on pretty short notice. It's reflected in what we're seeing with the on-demand booking side of the business."
Last, Delaney said instant booking for meeting space is heating up rapidly. He predicts that in three years, 75 percent of small, or simple, meetings will be booked and paid for online. Bookings on Meetingsbooker.com are on track to increase 200 percent from 2018 to 2019. The company forecasts another 350 percent increase for 2020. Its clients are 41 percent enterprise, 32 percent small to midsize and 27 percent nonprofit/governmental. "We feel the timing in the market for simple meetings is really beginning to take off," Delaney said, "and it's becoming more of a requirement from corporations and agencies."