Know, Grow and Own webinar series has now reached its climax and in this blog, we’ll be providing you details of our final webinar – Own Your MICE Business. This webinar talks about how you can own the MICE industry by understanding the challenges, the planners, trends and finally how your partnership with Cvent can help you in owning that success.
At a time when there are so many challenges for hoteliers in the leisure and corporate segments, there are several opportunities in the MICE segment. We wrapped up this webinar series showing hoteliers how they can own their MICE business and get more bang for the investment buck.
THE CHALLENGE
So, the challenges in the MICE industry today are:
- Flexibility and personalisation – To successfully attract MICE business, hotels need to be open-minded, agile and flexible in both services and facilities to respond to new demands. For example, the requirement for traditional boardroom style conference rooms is changing. Lately, event organisers prefer new meeting approaches such as outdoor spaces, innovative seating arrangements or cosy spots for smaller gatherings.
- Ability to adapt – New technologies, new trends and new event planners with new ideas are emerging these days. Whether it’s the latest social media integration, artificial intelligence or the sharing economy – venues need to have the ability to adapt to this new age, especially with the next generation of planners being Millennials and generation Z coming into the workplace.
- No eRFP solution – Not many hotels are using an eRFP solution. This creates a unique burden on hotel sales department and discourages repeat buyer behaviour. While the millennial planners are becoming tech savvy, not having an eRFP solution in place creates a negative impact of hotel/brand on planner’s perception.
THE OPPORTUNITY
If we talk about RFP volume in the market, Europe alone had over $1billion worth of unique RFPs in 2017. On an average, more than 800 RFPs travel around in the market almost every day. But then – Are you taking advantage of these RFPs? Are you in the right place at the right time?
This chart here represents feeder markets for Europe. It clearly shows that over 70% of venue sourced in Europe come from within Europe itself. The US stands at the second position with 22% market share, which is a huge opportunity within your market.
Are you in the right place at the right time?
Despite having opportunities worth $1billion up for grabs, the efforts and marketing spend are mainly positioned on the leisure and/or transient market, which usually have higher ADR and incremental spend.
MICE business contributes one-third of the hospitality industry’s income – with such a huge opportunity available, hotels really need to deviate some portion of their spend and focus towards MICE to become the MICE space leader.
Building a MICE strategy
Building the right MICE strategy can only come from getting accurate real-time data. This is where Cvent steps in and help you build a strategy supported by data.
With Cvent not only can you compare against competitors in the market but you can also prioritise leads, increase conversion rates, track MICE sales funnel performance. Cvent developed MICE Competitive Set Dashboard so that hoteliers can track key metrics to improve their analytic prowess, and measure demand, response/bidding, pricing trends, and RFP awarding behaviour, relative to their competitors.
Cvent’s MICE Competitive Set Dashboard helps hoteliers in multiple ways like –
- Access real-time data & insights
- Dynamic filtering and segmentation
- Drill-down to underlying RFPs
The Conclusion
- Adaptability – Venues need to be adaptable to meet new trends and technologies
- Generation Z is coming – Millenials are already dictating how planners source and where venues need to visible but are you ready for Gen Z?
- Be in the right place at the right time – Huge opportunities in the European MICE market and its only growing!
- Data based strategy – Data plays a vital role in building a progressive MICE strategy.
- Cvent – Not just a software provider but it can be your partner to success.
