WHY DO YOU NEED EVENT HOUSING SOFTWARE?

If you have contracted room blocks at multiple hotel properties, you need event housing software so that attendees can easily view rates and availability through one central link.
 
It sounds basic but picture this….
 
An attendee is researching which conferences to attend next year. Once they have narrowed down their options, they open Google to research the costs for budget approval. This includes registration fees, flight costs, hotel costs, and more.
 
The attendee heads to the event website and easily locates the registration fee. They see a button to view and book hotel rooms and open the link. It navigates them to a webpage that contains links to multiple individual hotel booking links. They open the first link and enter their dates… it returns that the inventory is sold out. They open the second link and enter their dates… again it returns a message that the inventory is sold out. They open a third link and enter their dates… once again it returns a message that inventory is sold out. Imagine the frustration. They decide to try one more time. And guess what? SAME THING. They shorten their dates thinking maybe only the shoulder nights are sold out. Nope. At this point not only can they not find inventory, they can’t find rates to submit for budget approval.
 

 
What would you do at this point?
 
I imagine one of the following scenarios would occur:
 

1. The attendee heads to an external booking site like Expedia or Trivago and books their room there. As an event planner, you just lost a room booking, meaning lost revenue. No rebates and/or commission and/or booking fees from that reservation. Additionally, if you’ve promised your host city a certain number of room nights in exchange for discounted venue space, this works against you.
2. The attendee emails the event manager asking for hotel information. The event manager has to reach out to participating hotels to see who still has availability, compile that information, and then call and/or email the attendee back. What a waste of time for everyone.
3. The attendee can’t find the right information to budget this event and decides to attend a different conference altogether.

 
This sounds extreme but this exact scenario recently happened to me and it was frustrating. And this was for a large, well-known conference with thousands of attendees!
 
There is a better way.
 
Enter event housing software.
 
Instead of using direct links to multiple hotel properties, attendees can access one link to view all available hotels, rates, locations, amenities, available dates, and more.
 

 

• When inventory is sold out alerts can be automatically sent to the event manager letting them know that they need to secure more inventory.
• If there is no more inventory available, you can indicate on the booking site that that particular hotel is sold out.
• Even if a hotel is sold out you can still view the rates so attendees researching the conference can obtain accurate budget information.
• You can update the booking site with messaging throughout the conference, alerting attendees that you will secure additional hotel inventory by X date.

 
There are a host of available features but most importantly, it creates an easy process for attendees. That is why housing software is vital today; people don’t want to waste time when there are easy solutions available.
 
Bring your events into the modern era of event technology with room block management software.