Online Hotel Booking: Shopping Around the Block

Despite increased competition from Internet travel sites like Hotels.com, Travelocity and Expedia, several online hotel booking services that cater to the tradeshow industry are keeping thrifty show participants from straying by offering discount rooms at non-room-block hotels.

Two companies currently offering their clients this option, Travel Technology Group and Travel Planners, say the practice benefits both show management firms and show participants, since it allows them the ability to count hotel rooms booked outside blocks toward their room totals and show history.

Another firm, Conferon, helps show managers out by either increasing the number of rooms at existing blocked hotels or adding hotels to the room-block contract.

Along with the show's room block, Chicago-based TTG's Encompass Reservation System offers showgoers non-blocked rooms through its Internet hotel distribution channel, which provides the discounted rooms via its access to the Hotels.com and Sabre Travel Network room inventories.

According to TTG Senior Vice President David Grissom, nearly 90 percent of its show manager clients use the online service, and 63 percent of them give their participants the option of booking either blocked or non-blocked rooms. The remaining clients opt to allow access to non-blocked rooms after the blocks' cutoff dates.

The service is popular, Grissom said, since "people are booking around the block anyway."

Encompass also allows show management firms the ability to track rooms booked at non-blocked hotels. That way, for example, when a TTG client's show participants recently flocked to the non-room-block Hilton Garden Inn in Orlando, TTG was able to add the hotel to the show's room block for subsequent years.

Initially, the idea of offering rooms at non-blocked hotels "scared the heck out of us," Grissom said, but "it never hurt our blocks."

Travel Planners provides similar services, but with one significant difference. Instead of contracting with an outside travel engine like Hotels.com, the New York-based firm offers Quikbook, a sister company that competes directly with the major Internet discount travel sites, even though it only advertises via direct marketing.

Penny Kent, Travel Planners' director of sales and marketing, said show participants like the Quikbook option since "sometimes people just want certain types of hotels" that aren't available in a traditional room block — smaller, boutique hotels, for instance.

Kent was quick to point out that, although the Quikbook access clearly gives show participants increased hotel options, "e-marketing the official room block" is always the top priority because it helps show management firms avoid attrition penalties.

Patti Beese, senior manager of operations and services for TTG client the Natl. Restaurant Assn., gives NRA Restaurant, Hotel-Motel Show participants the option of booking non-blocked rooms only after the show's cutoff date for its room blocks at Chicago hotels.

"From the association standpoint, our obligation is to the 52 hotels that we've contracted with to sell those rooms," Beese said.

TTG also generates revenue through a 5-percent commission from Hotels.com bookings and a 10-percent cut from non-block bookings through its Sabre contract. Grissom estimated the firm draws in an estimated $3,000 a month just from Hotels.com bookings. Unlike Travel Planners, TTG offers integrated travel options as well, including airline reservations. "It's a one-stop shop," Grissom said.

Conferon is another tradeshow industry-specific firm offering online hotel booking services. But for it, the idea of giving participants access to non-blocked rooms is "kind of bizarre," said Tina Wolke, the firm's senior registration project manager. Instead, the Twinsburg, Ohio-based company, which uses the Passkey hotel registration system, negotiates with block hotels on behalf of show management clients to either add rooms or even hotels to the block-room contract.

The conventional wisdom remains that more and more tradeshow participants are booking their own rooms, but the industry's online booking services continue to rake in revenue and praise. TTG's Internet hotel commission revenue nearly quadrupled from $44,512 in 2003 to $175,380 in 2004. The company brought in more than $500,000 in additional revenue last year through hotel audits. Quikbook has been voted Best of the Web several times by Forbes magazine, and Meeting Professionals Intl. recently extended its contract with Passkey for another two years.