Bass Hotels Debuts Site W/ Detailed Meeting Space Info.

<B>Bass Hotels Debuts Site W/ Detailed Meeting Space Info.</B>

By Chris Davis

With industry studies showing that corporate meeting planners use the Web at work primarily to research property information on hotel chain Web sites, Bass Hotels & Resorts has launched a new meeting-specific Web site that details meeting space for its individual properties. Officials also hinted at the possibility of booking meetings directly through the site some time in the future.

The site, meetings.basshotels.com, also allows planners to transmit electronic RFPs, which Bass officials said will be answered within 24 hours, and a facility search engine that will return only hotels with the appropriate meeting space and guest room availability. The site includes all Bass' Crowne Plaza, Inter-Continental, Holiday Inn and Staybridge Suites brands.

Bass vice president of e-commerce Eric Pearson said the chain conducted focus groups that indicated that planners most want such property information as floor plans, conference space and audiovisual capabilities when scouring the Internet at work. A recent study sponsored by Meeting Professionals International and meeting portal PlanSoft.com showed that 46 percent of the planners surveyed research meeting sites through individual hotel or chain Web sites, rather than third-party sites or MPI's (Meetings Today, Feb. 21).

"We didn't want to just boast about our hotels on the site," said Ravi Saligram, chief marketing officer and managing director of global strategy. "We wanted to provide information about the properties and destinations to help companies make decisions."

To that end, the site also features a downloadable fact sheet containing details on each property and its surrounding area--including the hotel's capacity and amenities--designed for the meeting planner to present to the internal corporate meeting sponsor.

Searches can be conducted by location, brand, or guest room or conference space capacity.

Pearson said the launch of the site last month was "phase one" of Bass' strategy concerning meetings and the Internet, and alluded to future capabilities that could include online meeting booking, which no hotel chain currently offers.

"Since the inception of our consumer Web site five years ago, we have enabled a direct connection to our central reservation system with no third party involved," Pearson said. "Because of that strategic direct connection, we have advantages in that we can provide reservation capabilities that others cannot, as we do not have to rely on a third party. We can make it happen quicker."

Pearson would not elaborate about potential timelines for such capability.