ETI Global Holidays

A good fit for MICE needs

ETI Global began using Cvent in 2017 – since its founding days. Thomas Pappachan, Founder and Director of ETI Global, had used Cvent Supplier Network (CSN) in a previous organisation and felt the tool was a good fit for ETI Global’s venue sourcing needs, which primarily comprised of MICE requests from a variety of organisations including from the Pharmaceutical and Financial Services clients, media firms, mid-size companies and government associations.

Before Cvent, sourcing used to be a manual and time-consuming process for Thomas, involving hours of phone-tag with hotels and waiting on RFPs to arrive via email. “When I started using CSN for the first time, I was very sceptical, like you know, how does it work? When it comes to MICE, we are used to personal calls to and from hotels. We didn't know there’s a platform where we can connect with hotels worldwide with one click,” says Thomas, adding “So when I came across Cvent, they told us what the tool does — how we can choose the destination for the client and get access to so many hotels, so many vendors, so many other people at one go — I was excited!”

“One of the main benefits that I have personally noticed is that, with a vendor, I have no choice but to accept the hotel/venue that he selects for us. But thanks to the Cvent platform, I've discovered that there are many more properties and better alternatives to pick from for the same price! We don’t get that from the vendor.”

Thomas Pappachan, Founder and Director, ETI Global Holidays

Evolution of the sourcing process

The Cvent Supplier Network was critical in helping ETI Global upgrade their sourcing process. It helped them expand their searches and gave them options they had not been privy to earlier. States Thomas, “Before we started using Cvent, we used to hire a local vendor from the desired destination and tell them the client’s requirements. The vendor would then give us a shortlist of hotels from that particular destination along with the final quotes. So while my work would be limited to just evaluating whatever options the vendor presented before me, we were wholly dependent on the vendor’s hotel options, their suppliers, their choice of places. Now, most of the work is happening with Cvent — we are doing most of the sourcing and shortlisting most of the hotels ourselves for our MICE clients. Which means, we’re getting more flexibility in terms of the choices we have. So now we’re able to provide more options to our clients for the same price.”

Not only was ETI Global able to instantly search thousands of event spaces that matched their specifications, they also saw some hotels giving quick responses to their RFPs sent through the tool. “Few of the hotels were responding quite fast. So I saw good opportunity in using CSN for MICE business and then slowly, we started uploading more MICE queries. As we gained more confidence in CSN over time, it became our tool of choice for MICE sourcing,” says Thomas, adding “Some hotels are so proactive, the moment we send them a request through Cvent, they immediately respond, and they also fine tune our RFP.”

Thomas’ close partnership with the Cvent team also helped in evolving ETI Global’s venue sourcing process. Reminisces Thomas, “They used to call me and help me in whatever way they could. Like you know, if I had some issues with some hotel or needed assistance with using the tool… they were very, very helpful.” He sums up his experience with using Cvent Supplier Network, with this statement: “If I had to rate Cvent Supplier Network on a scale of 1 to 5 stars, I’d give it 5 out of 5!”