OnVantage Releases Booking Tool For Small Meetings

Meetings technology provider OnVantage Inc. today unveiled a preliminary version of a new online tool aimed at booking small meetings that includes a standard contract that is preapproved by both hoteliers and corporate meeting buyers using the tool. OnVantage officially will launch the tool in a few weeks at the National Business Travel Association's annual convention.

Small meetings, which the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company defines as those with fewer than 50 attendees, account for 80 percent to 90 percent of corporate meetings overall, according to OnVantage CEO John Chang, and small corporate groups make up 60 percent of group room blocks for hotels.

The tool, named EasyBook, has a user interface similar to such online booking tools already on the market as Expedia Corporate Travel and Travelocity Business, but instead of booking individual rooms, users will be able to book blocks of up to 100 rooms, Chang said. Meeting buyers can book and pay for room blocks in real time using the prenegotiated terms. The tool is testing in eight metropolitan areas—the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas/Fort Worth, Portland, Nashville, Atlanta and Phoenix—and OnVantage aims to expand the tool to 36 cities by the end of the year. The tool also links users to their preferred air booking providers.

"We went to all of our corporate customers and we asked them for their contracts and we asked them for best practices," Chang said. "Then we went to our hotels and asked them for what conditions they wanted to see. Through a lot of back and forth, we eventually came up with a set of terms and conditions."

Though buyers and hotels may be able to negotiate more favorable contracts on their own, the time required to negotiate small events is not cost-effective, he added. In addition, many corporations may negotiate an umbrella agreement for small meetings in their home cities, but must start from scratch when booking an event elsewhere.

Search results on the tool sort by best match and property star ratings, with preferred transient vendors given a higher rank. Users cannot currently book meeting space through the tool, but Chang said the participating vendors rarely are unable to accommodate small events, unless the space required is disproportionately larger than the room block. In addition, only 40 percent to 60 percent of these groups require hotel meeting space, Chang said, while many events are held on company property.

Data on spend and volume through EasyBook is channeled into the OnVantage MeetingView product, enabling users to track spend and leverage small meetings volume for transient and large meeting contracts.