Meetings and events stand to save significantly on ground
transportation—if only they could automate management. That's the goal of
transportation logistics technology tool Pow Wow Smart.
It scans Excel spreadsheets of attendee information so
meeting managers have solid ground transportation plans plotted out in advance
of sourcing, chief revenue officer Seth Marcus said. That reduces the process
from several days to about seven seconds, he claimed.
The former sales executive with a
chauffeured services provider said ground transportation companies generally do not
check whether their passengers' flight itineraries are accurate until a few
hours prior to arrival. At that point, if something is off, the event planner
is bogged down with event details. "We eliminate that in the pre-planning
stages, before it gets to the ground provider, so they have valid information,"
Marcus said. "That's a major cost avoidance."
The tool also identifies duplicate travelers and missing
information and allows planners to schedule shuttle sizes and times, allocating
the number of people per shuttle and, using Bing and Google, calculating loop
drive times. "If you have 50 people coming in on the same flight into the
same [terminal], it suggests that you group them together into a larger
vehicle," he said, adding that a traditional ground transportation
company, rather, wants to book as many SUVs and sedans as possible.
Pow Wow Smart also helps source ground transportation using
its own marketplace of providers, vetted to make sure they meet safety and
security requirements. Pow Wow Smart also allows clients to work with their own
contracted ground transportation providers, though that usually decreases
savings, Marcus said.
MTC Limousine & Corporate Coach counts corporate
meetings as a significant portion of its business and that of its 700 global
partners. The company also is among those participating in Pow Wow Smart's
technology. MTC already used tablets for fleet management and built websites
for meetings attendees to register for transportation, owner Trevor Franklin
said, but the tool has proven a helpful complement. With the data crunching
that determines pricing on the supplier side, it's easier to communicate to
meeting buyers the value they're getting for that price. "People would
just ask how much to get from the airport in Miami to the Fontainebleau, which
doesn't have much meaning," Franklin said. His company can group people
and transport them for, say, $53 per person versus $58 per person for cabs, he
noted. "And that includes all the meet-and-greets and the cost of
everything. Now they have a budget for the next time they're in that area."
On The User's Side
Until June 2015, Pow Wow Smart, which recently drafted
StarCite founder John Pino to its advisory board, worked mostly with
destination management companies, which paid license and usage fees. Recently,
though, it has been working directly with corporations and meetings
registration tools.
Corporations can use the system themselves, but they often
pay the Pow Wow Smart team to apply the planning tools and take the event out
to bid. Pow Wow Smart charges no commission on vendors because it gets revenue
from their participation in the marketplace, Marcus said. "They choose the
vendor, and we handle everything for them once that's done: booking,
reservations and talking to the local ground transportation company. We also do
reconciliation of the billings when the event is done."
He estimated the tool cuts between 20 percent and
35 percent in overall ground transportation costs by grouping travelers and
using local providers. That works out to an average of $15 per attendee. It
also cuts more than 30 hours of work per meeting on the planning side,
according to Marcus.
The system also provides an opportunity for
planners to save face, he said. The tool recently caught a scheduling error on
behalf of a client. Six of the financial institution's partners were scheduled
to leave their hotel at 8 p.m., and yet their flights also were scheduled to
arrive at their destination at the same time. "Their pickup should have
been at 2 p.m.," Marcus said. "That would have been a big mess since
they were partners."