It works. Hotel sales managers live by it, and meeting planning teams use it to score the best prices on meetings and events. I’m talking about hotel negotiations. Despite best efforts, though, many buyers fail to get results. They show up at the bargaining table having done all their homework but walk away emptyhanded. Is it because they aren’t trained as negotiators but are facing off with hotel sales veterans, who take classes with names like Negotiating to Win? Maybe, but the problem also runs deeper. For a new generation of meeting buyers, conventional negotiating methods are fundamentally flawed. Here are four ways traditional tactics fall short, along with tips to level the playing field.
1. Traditional negotiation methods don’t play to young professionals’ strengths.
A Nielsen survey found Millennials rank technology use as the most defining characteristic of their generation (24 percent), followed by music/pop culture (11 percent). At 77 million strong in the U.S., Millennials are transforming the workplace with new forms of digital communications they find more efficient. Messengers and task managers are streamlining workflows and enabling speedy information exchange and quick discussions on vital issues. So when it comes to something so crucial as hotel negotiations, why limit communications to old-fashioned methods that rely primarily on emails and phone calls?
The Fix: Venue sourcing solutions are evolving to meet the needs of younger professionals. New tools add speed, transparency and enhanced documentation to communications. They simplify negotiations for planners across generations and expedite the process of getting meeting booked.
2. Don’t bog down decision-making.
Getting bids takes longer when handled by email alone because many people put off replying. Plus, mission-critical messages get lost, mixed in with marketing promotions and other emails.
The Fix: Strategic sourcing tools streamline communications and facilitate fast responses. Take the comparative bid summary, for example. This tool automatically calculates costs and savings and reformats bids in a dashboard with side-by-side comparisons. To create short lists, meeting buyers click the hotels they like. The bid summary eliminates awkward back-and-forth email requests for better deals and puts the power in buyers' hands. A buyer connects with a venue directly through a rebid button and dashes off a message specifying the changes the hotel needs to make to stay in the running. Nothing personal, you know? A sales manager makes his or her revisions through the tool, which updates the bid summary automatically. The technology simplifies bidding for suppliers and saves buyers hours of work compiling comparisons in a spreadsheet.
3. Avoid RFP spam.
The RFP receives widespread criticism as a slow tool with a low response rate. This problem results from “RFP spam.” The tech makes it so easy to send RFPs that buyers may be tempted to include 50-plus hotels on each RFP. Venues in turn conclude they have little chance of getting the business, so they take their time, eventually submitting incomplete bids, or they don’t respond at all.
The Fix: Let hotels see all venues copied on the RFP and later all those on the short list. It’s important for planning teams to qualify hotels upfront and limit each RFP to three to eight venues. This sets up a competitive bid environment while letting sales managers know they have a real shot at winning your business. The result? Increased response rates. Hotels act fast and send complete proposals the first time.
4. Stop scrolling through back-and-forth email threads.
With occupancy at record highs and availability low, it’s tougher than ever to manage the cluster of communications surrounding every bid. Important concessions can get lost, scattered across emails.
The Fix: The best negotiation trackers capture and store the entire bid history of each venue in one place. These dashboard-driven solutions give meetings buyers more control. All the information they need for negotiations is at their fingertips. Teams can easily compare bids by venue and view data on booked room nights by brand to leverage spend. One-click rebid functionality encourages competition among hotels for added savings. What about more complex negotiations beyond rates and concessions? Creating companywide concessions and contract clauses is a best strategic practice. Require venues to agree to them before submitting bids. That eliminates often difficult back-and-forth discussions on topics like group attrition and food-and-beverage-minimum guarantees.
Bottom Line
Am I saying email is out for Millennial planners? Absolutely not. Adobe’s 2018 Consumer Email Survey found email is still the top engagement channel across generations. However, consumers’ preference for other channels like instant messaging, face-to-face meetings, video conferencing and chatbots has grown and it has translated into expectations for business technologies and interactions. Email is alive and well for meetings communications, but it’s not the only way to reach hotels and decision makers.