Industry

What do meeting planners want? Surprising survey results:

To help hotel sales managers win at various phases of the sourcing process, Tambourine partnered with EproDirect to collect insights from more than 83,000 meeting planners to find out what promos and incentives peak their interest, what marketing strategies actually influence them and what impacts their booking decisions.

After analysing the data, Tambourine discovered some things you might expect along with some surprises.  Click here to view the full report:

Survey participants profile:

31% – 3rd Party/Independent
29% – Association
25% – Corporate
5% – Government
10% – Other

Key findings

Meeting planners want to see quicker response times from hotels, an improvement in the quality of facilities and stronger customer service in 2017. While last year, planners said hotels could improve by offering better onsite technology, more competitive packages, along with quicker response times and stronger customer service.

Double down on email marketing

Despite all the attention given to social media today, 59% of the meeting planners surveyed said email marketing is still their preferred method of receiving information, special offers or updates. Trade shows/events trailed at 15% , while only 2% of planners surveyed preferred social media. One planner noted, “FAM tour opportunities and new hotels/venues and destinations are able to catch my eye.” While another planner said that he/she values emails that include unique ideas and articles.

Email still reigns as a meeting planner’s favourite method of contact. An overwhelming majority surveyed prefer to be solicited via email (87%), over phone calls (7%) and LinkedIn messages (2%).

Offer relevant venue videos

Videos allow planners (especially part-time or non-traditional meeting planners, who carry out other responsibilities besides organizing events) to inspect a venue right from their office. When viewing videos, meeting planners consider facility views (72%) and self-guided virtual tours (69%) as being most helpful to their sourcing journey. Last year, planners also saw endorsements and ideas from meeting peers as most helpful (63%).

Provide the right tools on your website

Meeting planners rely on hotels to provide all the relevant sourcing tools directly on their website. The top five items that planners find the most valuable on your hotel’s meetings site include capacity charts, floor diagrams, room measurements, virtual/video venue tours and photos of actual events.

Offer the right meeting incentives and promo offers

While meeting incentives and promotional offers only moderately impact a meeting planner’s site selection, food and beverage discounts (53%) and complimentary meeting space promos (71%) are considered the most attractive types of promo offers. Last year, incentives and promo offers had more impact, with 57% of planner participants saying that these could largely influence their site decisions.

Mingle with the right social channels

Out of all the social media platforms used regularly for planning meetings, 42% of planners use Facebook and 60% say they prefer LinkedIn. Provide value on both channels by sharing unique event-related ideas and resources, answering planner’s questions and participating in groups.

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