Skift Take
The legacy hotel companies are developing new strategies to engage meeting planners and attendees more like they do with their leisure crowds, but some of these initiatives seem overly ambitious or too corporate to become mainstream.
With healthy advance bookings for meetings forecasted through 2018, the major hospitality brands are showing a sudden surge of creativity to engage meeting planners in more compelling ways similar to leisure travel audiences.
At the IMEX America meetings industry trade show in Las Vegas this month, we spoke with top group sales and marketing executives at Marriott International, Hyatt Hotels, Hilton Worldwide, and MGM Resorts International to learn how the global brands are developing strategy around their meeting platforms heading into 2017.
"I think we're still in a healthy phase in the meetings business because occupancy levels are at an all-time high, and there's a shift with corporate buyers doing more multi-years," said Brian King, global brand and sales officer for Marriott International. "Typically, corporate is a couple years out and maybe one contract at a time, but because demand has been so strong, if you want the space, the smart planner is going to do a multi-year. So we're seeing a longer horizon than we've seen before."
At the same time, King told Skift that the days of planners booking hotel meetings solely on "rates, dates, and space are over." Even though business is good and it's still a seller's market, planners are more demanding because their delegates are more demanding. Blame it on Millennials, social media, lifestyle hotels, whatever, but people are tired of boring banquets in big beige boxes.
"It's not just 72-inch rounds and chicken breasts anymore," King said. "These are experience-driven consumers, and planners are saying, 'My attendee base is asking for things that they've never asked for before.' That's really where our Meetings Imagined platform came from a few years ago. It was an answer to planners who told us, 'I'm getting demands from my attendees and I'm not sure what to do.'"
Post-Merger Marriott Meetings
Since the Marriott-Starwood merger, planners have been concerned that less competition would drive higher group rates. King dispensed with the idea, saying, "The reality is the hotels are usually owned by individual owners, and every hotel is a micro-market unto itself. I think some planners see that as a concern, and I understand that, but pricing is really driven based on the specific market around the individual property."
Marriott recently partnered with LG Electronics to develop the LG Studio meeting space, which includes a full-service kitchen outfitted with LG appliances. This has
