Do you find yourself having the same stale conversations when selling to meeting planners? Do you struggle to secure hotel group sales and leave conversations with planners feeling defeated or confused?
If so, consider a new approach when selling to meeting planners. The landscape of hotels and group bookings is changing rapidly, and it’s important to understand what planners need and how your property can address those needs.
Here are five ways to shake up your routine and have more meaningful, enlightened planner conversations that get attention and increase venue revenue.
1. Reconsider Your Comp Set
Identifying new target accounts starts with expanding your view of the competition. Who are your comp set properties? Are you bound to your STR comp set? If so, you may be unnecessarily limiting your property. Instead, consider multi-faceted data and look beyond your STR report.
To do this, reassess your chain scale competitors. Many new and renovated hotels look and feel more upscale than their official STR category. Most hotels entering the market today are upper midscale and upscale but could easily compete with upper-upscale hotels.
This is why you must rethink your comp set using competitive data. A local comp set is great for benchmarking, but you may be missing critical information if you only look at one data set, especially when selling to meeting planners. Differentiate between which hotels are comparable and which are actually competitive.
2. Be Proactive
Event planners are busy. They don’t have time to seek out individual properties, so ensure you get on their radar. And if you wait for them to decide on a destination, you could miss out on increasing venue revenue. Instead, reach out to planners to position your property as a wise choice.
Being proactive is especially important if you are located in a secondary market. Data shows that 53% of meeting planners consider moving meetings to secondary markets to reduce cost, which is well above respondents who choose a lower chain scale venue within the same market. This means you can reach out to businesses in primary markets and position your market as a competitive choice.
In addition to targeting different markets, look into groups going to larger hotels. According to our 2024 State of the Meetings Industry Study, almost 50% of US meetings had 100 attendees or less in 2023. This is an optimistic statistic because it means that even boutique hotels can drive revenue at their event venue.
3. Arm Yourself for the Cold Call
Leveraging booking patterns and data on a group’s history (how many room nights they use, meeting sizes, etc.) will help you elevate your call with the planner and understand their needs.
Every planner’s needs will be different, but we’ve found that pricing is the main area of dissatisfaction with hotels or other event venues for planners (47% reported “cost” as the top area of dissatisfaction). Other contenders were responsiveness, staffing levels, and staffing experience.
To make the most out of your call with a planner, make sure you understand their needs and address their potential dissatisfactions proactively. Ask open-ended questions, and don’t ask anything you can learn on your own, such as what dates the group prefers (instead, lay out those facts to show how well-versed you are on the account).
4. Craft a Story
No one wants to be on a call with a hotel sales professional and feel like they’re talking to a robot. Rather than focusing on selling your property and listing off features, craft a story that will illustrate how your unique property fits the planner’s meeting space needs.
To do this, gather data on your target customers, such as their group size, market preferences, past functions, or company values. For example, planners say that DEI and attendee well-being are the top trends influencing meetings and events. How will your hotel address these values?
Then, use that data to create a narrative about why your venue is the ideal choice for them. How will your hotel address these values? What level of service can they expect? How do your property’s features meet their needs? Make it easy for them to envision their next successful event with your hotel.
Just like there are countless types of hotels, there are also many types of meeting planners, and by doing your research, you can craft your sales calls to their specific needs.
5. Build Long-Term Relationships
Lastly, don’t just settle for booking one event. Instead, consider how you can build a long-term partnership with the planner. Do they have other meetings in a different group subsegment that you want? Do they host annual holiday parties? Do they have any other meetings on the calendar? If you can build a great relationship with the planner, you can then respectfully ask them to be your hotel’s advocate for future events.
Based on our research, planners are optimistic about 2024. Approximately 42% expect an increase in bookings, with almost a third forecasting growth of up to 20%. That said, building relationships with meeting planners to drive future event revenue is more critical than ever.
Sell Smarter with Knowland
Both planners and hotel sales professionals are optimistic about the growth of group bookings. But, to leverage this momentum, it’s essential to make the most out of your conversations with meeting planners, both for your sake and for theirs.
At the core of all successful hotel bookings is good data, whether that includes more comprehensive comp sets, account booking history, or future booking needs. Efficient hotel sales professionals use this data to craft conversations to fit the planners’ needs and build crucial, long-term relationships to secure future revenue opportunities.
Want to enhance your data to drive revenue at your event venue? Knowland’s market analysis, competitor tracking, and account booking history help hotel sales leaders do more with less, boost their productivity, and accelerate growth. Contact us today to find a solution to your current group selling challenges.
