Business Travel News - November 19, 2007 - (Page 25)

MeetingsToday INSIDE November 19, 2007 New Head To Reengineer SITE Passkey, Certain Unveil Tools Japan’s Hotel Rates Slowly Climb 26 26 28 Buyers Try To Ease ’08 Rate Hikes BY ELISSA HUNTER felt by meeting buyers. Meeting buyers will be facing increased prices across the board “We’ve definitely seen the costs going up. Hotels are still nein 2008, according to forecasts recently released by third-party gotiating, but not like they were in the past,” said Cheryl Hoftravel management companies. fard, manager of meetings and events for Schwan Food Co. Hotels will increase group rates and fees, including charges “Room rates overall are just getting higher. You see the creep for meeting space, but buyers are trying to mitigate costs by ex- going up when you look at different cities, and whether we have Continued on page 32 panding site searches, negotiating value-adds and even holding certain meetings virtually or onsite. BCD Travel in September released its 2008 industry forecast that predicted average group hotel room rates in major markets will increase between 8 percent and BY ELISSA HUNTER 10 percent. American Express in its foreagement over the past two years. More cast released last month also predicted a More than half of corporate meeting than 75 percent said that those departbuyers said their company’s procurement ments’ influences had neither increased 10 percent increase in guest room rate. “The high cost of guest rooms will di- department has not recently increased its nor decreased the costs of meetings. rectly impact corporate meeting and event involvement in meetings management However, meeting management complanners,” said Chris Wilkes, American Ex- over the past two years, according to an panies and consultancies are seeing the press practice leader of advisory services exclusive Meetings Today survey, although number of procurement-influenced meetfor meetings management. “Hotel rooms several third-party management compa- ings programs on the rise. “Every industry is at the point where are now representing nearly half of all nies and consultants said that number is meetings spending, exclusive of air.” increasing. the free-spending days are no longer here,” The increase in pricing already is being Of the 137 corporate meeting buyer sur- said George Odom, senior director of busiveyed, 58 percent said their company’s pro- ness development for Advito, BCD Travel’s curement and finance department had not consulting arm. “The procurement menbecome more involved in meetings manContinued on page 32 Procurement’s Role Stays In Flux PACIFIC PROGRESS New Carlson Hotels Asia/Pacific president Martin Rinck eyes major development in China, India and Southeast Asia. SEE PAGE 28 StarCite CEO Partners For Reach StarCite president and CEO Michael Boult last month spoke with meetings management editor Elissa Hunter about the meetings technology provider’s recently announced partnerships, future plans, the progress of meeting benchmarking data and future marketplace trends. Meetings Today: Recently, you’ve announced partnerships with Orbitz, American Express and Pegasus. Why all the collaborations and why now? Michael Boult: Each one of them is quite different. We’ve always had a history of working with other partners to fill out our solution. I don’t think we’ve ever had it in our mind to build the complete corporate and supply-side integrated ecosystem. StarCite has collaborated with online booking tools and travel management companies and meeting Continued on page 33 Meeting Buyers Split On Procurement’s Involvement More corporate procurement/finance department involvement in meetings management, past two years MEETINGS MONITOR No 58% Yes 42% STARCITE PRESIDENT AND CEO MICHAEL BOULT Source: A Meetings Monitor survey of 137 corporate meeting buyers MANAGING MEETINGS AT: CA Attendee Software Simplifies Tech Co.’s Large Event BY ELISSA HUNTER IT management software provider CA, formerly known as Computer Associates, reduced man-hours and organized and simplified the hotel booking process for attendees of a large clientfacing conference by implementing housing registration software. In the past, the company used Excel spreadsheets to manage hotel reservations for the annual CA World conference, consisting of more than 5,000 attendees and 2,000 staff members. “We were doing everything manually, with Excel spreadsheets, one for each hotel, and it got up the point where we were up to using about 40 hotels and it was just really, really difficult to manage,” said director of event strategy Madeleine Brust. The conference, with attendees from all over the world, is one week long and uses 6,000 room nights on peak. It has 60 housing sub-blocks in order to accommodate attendees’ individual needs. “It was very hard to take a step back and see how well it was working for us. There was just so much data, so many different hotels, so many different property management systems that they were using. It was very difficult to get your hands around the whole thing,” she said. In 2001 and 2002, the company held CA World in Orlando, where several hotels were using Passkey, an online hotel registration system. “Several of the hotels in Orlando were already using Passkey, and the convention and visitors bureau acted as our housing bureau and managed the blocks through Passkey,” Brust said. After 2002, the company moved the event to a location that didn’t use the system, and since CA didn’t want to have to switch to another system, in 2003 the company licensed the Passkey software and began managing it themselves. The number of hotels used was reduced as well, due to using larger hotels. Continued on page 32 CA’S MADELEINE BRUST

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Business Travel News - November 19, 2007

Business Travel News - November 19, 2007
Contents
Avis Ups Its Bet With Carey Investment
Notebook: ACTE Assails Green Taxes
EC Adopts Revised CRS Code Of Conduct
Dynamic Discovery: General Dynamics’ Loper Mines Data
American First: AA Wins BRN's 2007 Air Survey
Perfecting Attendance: CA’s Brust Deploys Event Reg. Tech.
Mtg. Buyers Grapple With Price Hikes
Business Travel News - 2007 Resource Guide
Table of Contents
Airline Benchmarks
Siemens: Global Balance
Hotel Benchmarks
Syngenta: Selective Sourcing
Online Booking Benchmarks
Pfizer: Cross-Border Mtgs. Consolidation
Meetings Benchmarks
Planes, Trains and Striking Good Deals

Business Travel News - November 19, 2007

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