Did you know  that the ability to immediately accept a group bookings for your hotel gives you 100% higher conversion rate.

Yes, its huge … we went through a year load of data, over US$10 billion dollars of group bookings requests and it clearly shows that you will convert twice as many group bookings if you can accept them straight away. Of course, price, location, brand, service are huge differentiators, but this ability to buy group instantly really works. We feel this is a massive opportunity for our hotel partners.

The analysis of our 2018 hotel group bookings leads saw that we pushed through a healthy  30% conversion rate. This went up to 60% when instant offers were used.

Instant offers is our immediate booking tool. It is a pre-approved rate quote. You (the hotel) is in full control of the price and the booking conditions. This huge growth in conversions applied right across our business. Right now our business breaks down into 40% corporate and 60% leisure with the average booking size ranging from 40 to 60. The higher conversion rate applied across all the segments of the group market for hotels using instant offers to bid.

It seems group planners just want to get the booking done. RFPs take a lot of time from hours to weeks and as long as they are responded to manually  this will continue. In my previous role as the managing Director of Trade publication I spent between £500,000 to £800,000 on hotel venues a year and I was constantly astounded that I would have to chase the hotels for responses for my RFPs. A 2-week wait was not uncommon.  What is exciting is that is that by using instant offers group bookings you can respond faster and  beat your competitors to the business.

Some larger and high value groups will need hand holding but the beauty of having a segment of your group business distributed instantly is that it drastically reduces the time you spend on small and uncomplicated groups so you can focus on the high value business.

To start we recommend instant offers be used for smaller groups based on the size of the hotel and the business mix a 100 room hotel should have 10-15 rooms available in instant offers. If there are slow periods, i.e. winter set up an instant offer just for this time period and increase the amount of rooms that can be requested. It would be good idea to offer up to 30 to 40 rooms.

We have over 4000 hotels around the world using Instant Offers today. Many hotels find using Instant Offers very useful – the hotel salesperson can add black out dates, terms and conditions for a sale, upgrade information, can customize offers for specific time periods or days of week. Instant Offers also is a great way to cover time out of the office. Set up an instant offer when going on vacation – or not going to be on property for a specific day.

We are also innovating to enable you to sell group rates instantly with less work. We are test group bookings via the GDS and  via or via a channel manager direct into your  PMS.

Our goal is to use technology to automate group so that the hotel sales staff have the time to bring in and convert the more group business.

 Let me know if you want to start to use our instant offers tool.   The link to set up an instant group offer is included on your hotel’s summary page.

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Let me know if you want to start to use our instant offers tool.