“Outside of recruitment and rising costs there is no more
important industry topic than instant book in the simple meetings arena.”
This observation by Sian Sayward of Inntel explains why around 150 event professionals came together for the beam Instant Book Summit at the Doubletree by Hilton Oxford
Belfry Hotel.
Organised in partnership with headline
sponsor venuedirectory.com, it proved to be a day of enthusiastic debate and energetic
discussion with no shortage of questions and opinions from the audience.
After an introduction by beam's consultant executive director Juliet Price, venuedirectory.com MD Michael Begley set the scene discussing “What do we define as
a small meeting?”. Venuedirectory.com data shows that meetings for up to 30
delegates cover 82 per cent of bookings.
Kate Scully, global business travel manager of Howdens Group
shared a corporate buyer's perspective in conversation with Chetan Shah of
Micebook.
Scully said: “I would be happy to see venues listed on a booking
platform, with instant access to support. This would make everything more
efficient and give us hours back.”
During the Agency Panel, Richard Shacklock of Agiito
observed “You can book accommodation out of office hours but you can’t book a
meeting room.”
Paul Casement of Clarity said: “We have to sharpen up the
booking side for small meetings. Instant book allows us to streamline and
better place our resources to serve our clients – this is particularly
pertinent given current resource pressures we’re all experiencing.”
The technical panel moderated by Caleb Parker of Bold
considered what was limiting the rate of adoption in the UK. Luis De Souza of
NFS Tech said:“Many of our venue clients like to deal with all
enquiries in a personal way so are reluctant to lose that. But it is changing.
Venues are becoming more comfortable about releasing access to inventory.” Dan
Humby of Groups 360 said; “It’s a complex issue with a lot of legacy technology
to overcome and many different technologies in use.”
After Douglas O’Neill said that there “needs to be parity of
price no matter which booking channel is used,” Julie Shorrock of HTS said “We
should learn from mistakes and also take what works well in the accommodation
sector in developing this.” Jacqui Kavanagh of EDGE Venues led a panel
asking ‘What does success look like in Supply, Distribution & Book?’, Danny Yates
summed up the views of many with one word; “Adoption.”
When Callum Mclean of Agiito called for an industry working
party, many people volunteered to be on it. “A first task will be to define small meetings sizes and/or simple meetings” Mclean added.
Summing up the day,Matthew Davies of Cvent said:“Direct
booking is here now. The industry is ready. Event planners want it. There are
hurdles that can be overcome, not brick walls.”
Judi Oliver of Silverstone said: “It’s great to
get everyone in one room to discuss the various issues and the challenges
around instant book,” while Lucy Sikora of The Savoy said: “This is the
perfect topic to discuss in person. We need more education around the
technicalities of Instant Book in order to drive confidence and move forward.”
“So many people have said that, before today, they didn’t
really appreciate what an important topic this is and that they had learnt so
much,” Juliet Price said.
Michael Begley added: “Instant book offers so many valuable benefits. There’s so much to gain by bringing together agencies, clients, suppliers and technology providers to discuss the opportunities and issues, turn them into action and move the solution forward faster.
“We need to come back together in about
six months to review progress and keep up the momentum.”
