INTEGRATED EVENT REGISTRATION AND HOUSING

Meetingmax offers many solutions for integrated event registration and housing. The first option is to connect proprietary registration software through our open API. With this, your development team can push and pull information into your desired event registration platform. Another option is to take advantage of pre-existing integrations with popular registration platforms. Lastly, if you’re feeling courageous, you can embed code at the end of the hotel reservation process flipping the traditional model by having attendees book their hotel rooms prior to registration! More on that soon, first let’s review the benefits of an integrated solution:

Benefits of integrated event registration and housing:

 

  • Attendees can move seamlessly from event registration to booking hotel rooms.
  • Event planners often see an increase in room pickup inside the block as attendees are not searching for rooms on other sites. It’s also quick and easy to cross-compare attendees who have registered but have yet to book a hotel room and email these attendees to encourage them to book inside the block ASAP.
  • Eliminates data duplication for attendees. Personal information such as name, home address, and more are carried over from registration to housing.
  • It creates a central data hub; attendee information can be pushed back from housing to registration so you can view all important information on one platform.
  • Better inventory control as you can manage which attendee tracks are sent to specific hotel sub-blocks. For example, VIP registrants will be pushed to the VIP sub-block at the headquarter hotel.
  • You have the option to enforce attendees, allowing only registered guests to access the hotel inventory for the event. If an attendee tries to access the hotel link, they will be directed to complete registration first.

 
Now that we know the benefits of an integrated solution, let’s review some examples of how clients are executing this.

Examples of integrated event registration and housing:

Number 1
(1) Proprietary Registration Software: Having your own registration system is an ideal scenario as your development team will have full access to build the integration.

An example of proprietary registration integrated with Meetingmax is South by Southwest ™. After registering, attendees can book their hotels room within their registration profile. Prior to registering, attendees can view all available hotels and detailed information on each property (see images below). This is utilizing the Shopping View in Meetingmax’s API. Guests cannot book through these pages, but rather can determine which property they wish to stay at once registration is complete and they gain access to the hotel rooms. SXSW does a fantastic job managing multiple sub-blocks; not only are there various badge types (platinum, interactive, music, film, etc) but there are also numerous attendee types (speaker, performer, volunteer, award recipients, etc). Each registration type is pushed through to its corresponding sub-block in Meetingmax; meaning that platinum speakers will view different hotel inventory than film volunteers.

Integrated Event Registration and Housing - Example of Shopping View API

Number 2

(2) Stova (Aventri) Registration Software: Meetingmax has a pre-existing integration with Stova (Aventri) registration meaning no development is required to complete the integration. Simply take the API key from one system and plug it into the other. Our team uses this integration for our annual user conference, The Unconvention. When guests complete registration in Aventri a button appears directing them to access the Meetingmax Hotels, as shown below:

Integrated Event Registration and Housing - Aventri Meetingmax Hotels Button

Attendee categories in Stova (Aventri) can easily be mapped out to sub-blocks in Meetingmax so that specific attendee types can only access specific sub-block hotel inventory within Meetingmax, as shown below:

Integrated event registration and housing - Aventri - Category Mapping

Number 3

(3) RainFocus Registration Software: Meetingmax also has a pre-existing integration with RainFocus meaning no development is required to complete the integration. Simply take the API key from one system and plug it into the other. When guests have completed their event registration they will see a BOOK HOTEL button on their registration profile.

Integrated event registration and housing - RainFocus - Book Hotels Button
Registration tracks inside RainFocus can be correlated to specific sub-blocks within Meetingmax. All guest hotel information inside Meetingmax is pushed back to RainFocus so that the attendee can make changes and view important details in a central location. Below is an example of VMware Explore using the Enforce Attendee feature whereby any guests who tried to access the hotel reservation site prior to registering for the event were unable to and redirected to registration.

Enforce Attendee Feature

Number 4

(4) Embed Registration In Housing: Traditionally attendees register for an event and then book their hotel rooms; switch things up and embed your event registration page at the end of the hotel booking process. If this is the only way for guests to access registration then you can guarantee that they will book inside your block! Meetingmax offers the ability to embed code at the end of the hotel reservation process, as shown below:

Embed registration in housing

Many emerging trends suggest that room block management software will become fully integrated with event technology in the future to provide a uniquely personalized attendee experience. While our future predictions for a fully integrated experience are not here yet, we are seeing more clients with integrated event registration and housing platforms.

Sound Good?

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