If bad face-to-face events don’t get better, bad online meetings will replace them.

Trends in the MICE market and their opportunities for the conference hotel industry and locations.

“Get closer to your customers than ever before. So close that you can tell them what they need. Before they realise it themselves“. Steve Jobs

This interactive one-day seminar highlights all the topics that are currently changing the meetings market. Every change involves opportunities and risks for conference hotels and customers in this market. Those who understand the processes of change can actively shape them and adapt to new requirements in time and even achieve an important differentiation from the competition. Even if your conference customers are still following the well-trodden paths and do not even know yet what they will need for their events tomorrow.

The main focus of the content:

Before the event:

• Booking and procurement channels are changing. Large companies are letting MICE service providers organise contract binding, procurement and billing. The preparation of offers on the RFP server poses new challenges for order taking in conference hotels. What should be paid attention to? What questions should a conference hotel ask when a portal offers the listing?
• Instant Book in the conference market. At the latest since Meet Connect, the platforms spacebase or Meetingsbooker went live, it has become clear that the era of real-time online booking has also dawned in the conference market. It is currently questionable whether the online intermediaries will divide the cake among themselves or whether the conference hotel industry and locations will also offer an instant book alternative to directly booking customers. There are various solutions on the market for this (yes, none is perfect yet), a clever infrastructure and sensible business rules must accompany the process change from the enquiry to the online booking process.

During the event:

From the new customer request to the new conference product

• More and more event customers are planning dialogue and interaction in the conference room and interactive formats. Fast internet and suitable software provide for hybrid meetings or pure online events, which represent a threat and at the same time an opportunity for the conference hotel industry.
• What role do “green meetings or sustainable event management strategies” play, what are the framework conditions and why is it becoming a “must have” today?
• The hybrid meeting will not disappear again – what do meeting hotels need to know and offer about hybrid requirements?
  Pharma code and compliance rules, how professional conference hotels deal with them.

These new event formats also demand new concepts and offers from the locations and conference hotels. Conference packages A and B and U-form or parliament are yesterday’s concepts that are less and less in demand. Those who actively offer innovations in time and do not wait for a customer to ask for them will find successful ways to differentiate themselves.