Online Housing: Fear Attrition No More
By Rachelle Crum -- Tradeshow Week, 3/20/2006
No online system for matching tradeshow attendees with hotel rooms is flawless. Even the housing system providers will concede that.
And it doesn't matter if your show is headed to Las Vegas or Milwaukee, you're bound to run into some issues with the service. However, even now that the industry's online housing systems have lived and learned through their first dozen or so years, the firms are busier than ever ironing out the kinks and — perhaps most importantly for their show management clients — becoming more adept at keeping attendees and exhibitors from straying too far from the sacred room block.
Attrition remains one of the most persistent challenges for online housing providers, said Kristen Mulvaney, director of sales for Falls Church, Va.-based Expovision Convention Housing, which has contracts with NAB, American Society of Assn. Executives & the Center Annual Meeting & Exposition and the Packaging Machinery Manufacturing Institute's shows.
Expovision strives to make it simple for attendees to book and manage reservations with Web sites free from advertisements and other distractions, Mulvaney said.
Expovision isn't the only one. Many are learning to go further to make it easier and more comfortable to book a room online.
"The look and feel of the site is customizable for each tradeshow or event," said Julie Proffitt, a spokeswoman for Chicago-based Travel Technology Group, which has provided housing for shows like the Natl. Restaurant Assn. Restaurant, Hotel-Motel Show and the Intl. Boston Seafood Show. "It has the same look and feel as that specific event; thus the attendee or exhibitor will have a seamless transition from the show's Web site to our booking reservation system."
Angelo Gangone, vice president of tradeshows for the Assn. of Woodworking & Furnishings Suppliers, said a flawless connection between the housing and show Web sites is essential for the biennial AWFSVegas.
Gangone said rooms booked in the 2005 show block were up 150 percent over 2003. Of course, part of the reason the association managed 25,000 hotel nights last year was because the show moved to Las Vegas. In 2003, about 10,000 hotel nights were booked in Anaheim. And there was increased promotion and a demographics change, as the show had a lot of Southern California drive-in participants.
Still, he gives housing firm Ambassadors credit for a Web site that "customized to a degree that it looked like it was part of our site."
"They did a very good job in being proactive," he said. Even the confirmation e-mail from Ambassadors to exhibitors and attendees "looked like it was coming directly from us. That's really, really important now, more than ever."
Mary Dolaher, vice president of tradeshows and events for the Entertainment Software Assn., operator of E3/Electronic Entertainment Expo, said that spicing up the site also helps. The association collaborates with housing provider Convention Management Resources on the show, which uses about 8,000 rooms on peak nights in Los Angeles.
"We do everything possible to create compelling content on our housing Web site that promotes the destination and is user-friendly," Dolaher said.
Some housing providers are taking things a step further to accommodate show managers and participants.
For large shows like E3, where exhibitors typically bring a slew of representatives, Travel Technology Group is allowing groups of two or more to book as many reservations as needed, based on hotel availability, in real time, Proffitt said, as opposed to submitting the request and waiting for a response while a room block is created.
All that may be fine for the show manager worrying about attrition penalties. But for attendees, there's still the fear — unfounded, say online housing firms — that without the human touch, they really don't have a reservation.
Wyndham Jade has a way of reassuring show participants that the hotel has their booking. The Dallas-based group has created a system that lets show participants receive room confirmations — directly from the hotel itself — within three days of booking.
Wyndham Jade CIO Tom Levine said the system helped bring peace of mind for participants of shows like Firehouse Expo, Cosmoprof North America and Intl. Salon & Spa Expo — Long Beach. He added, "It was really a big boon, especially for international delegates."
Not to be outdone, Greg Wuerfel, owner of San Diego-based Conference Housing, said it's even smart to take a step back in time and let show participants have an old-fashioned telephone conversation with the housing provider.
"(We're) trying to provide more information on the Web sites, and promote telephone and e-mail communication to answer questions and help them fit into the proper hotel," said Wuerfel, whose clients include the Natl. Sports Collectors Convention and California Science Education Conference.
All this, and then there's still the need to fight the last, best reason to abandon the room block: because it's cheaper to do so.
"The bottom line is that price will determine where attendees book," Mulvaney said. So, due to competition from consumer travel Web sites, Expovision has developed a program to enforce the rate integrity clauses that are now standard in most hotel contracts.
