It's tough times out there - but our team is really picking up the pace and showing great value to our customers. It's times like these when we can really "showoff" our expert team and why we've always hired over-qualified staff to do what has typically been considered data entry. We believe in having housing management experts manage contracted room inventory. There are some event professionals who prefer to have attendees contact hotels directly, that's their choice...but I'm about to argue the case for oversight and management.
Here's a little bit about the industry lingo I'll be using, hang with me:-) No-shows happen when a pax (industry lingo for passenger) fails to show up for a reservation, the hotel releases the room and charges the customer. When the customer comes in the next day they don't have a room AND they have a charge on their credit card. It's not a fun scene for anyone involved. Sometimes it's also called a NSR (if you want to get really down with the lingo). Attrition happens when a client doesn't fulfill their commitment to the hotel with regard to the number of rooms promised or food and beverage amounts outlined in a contract. For example, say you decide to send 100 people to a show instead of the usual 300 people. Since the city always sells out and you have to have a hotel, you sign a contract sometimes as far out as 3+ years in advance. This is so that you have a great rate and also a place to stay. The hotel has you sign an agreement so that you don't hold all their rooms off the market and then dump them at the last minute - leaving the hotel with rooms they could have otherwise sold. Everyone's happy right? Well that's what happens most of the time, but recently rates are much lower now than anyone ever thought they would be. Add to that the fact that the client needs far fewer rooms than they originally thought they would need...and it's no surprise that we've been doing a ton of renegotiation this year. Hotels do sometimes re-work existing agreements, we're very lucky that we have excellent relationships with several of the hotels and have been able to work out win-win situations for everyone involved.
Christina just finished managing 900 rooms in Chicago at The Intercontinental and The James. She had ZERO no-shows and is working on a solution so that the client may not have attrition penalties. Christina loves working with these hotels, she's a huge fan of the Intercon. Jamie also managed a room block in Chicago for client with roughly 500 rooms at The Hyatt and The Fairmont, she runs a tight ship with regard to watching her client's pick up and working with the hotel and client to add, or in this case, release rooms. She was able to negotiate lower rates and the client opened their block to their vendors and business partners..thus selling more rooms to make up for a smaller staff this year. I truly believe we have the best staff in the industry and now more than ever we are able to show our value. Total combined savings for these clients alone add up to more than $200,000.00. That doesn't even count the no-show management issue and how we do such a great job of avoiding ANY no-shows. I'll have to come back and post an update later, because some of the negotiations are ongoing so that number could climb even higher.
Now more than ever you should have an industry professional review or negotiate hotel agreements. Recently I've created my own clauses from scratch so that we could get the hotel and the client what they needed. I'm not going to give away trade secrets, but with careful advance planning you can avoid challenging situations like these altogether.
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