Destination Community
Sunriver Resort Meetings and Corporate Meeting Trends: Lessons from our “Business Climate Focus Group”
Recently, the sales and marketing team of Sunriver Resort hosted a “business climate focus group” with key clients to discern today’s corporate meeting trends. Specific goals of this focus group were to learn about the state of their businesses, find out what is important to planners, and understand how the meeting planning industry has changed in recent years. The Sunriver Resort meetings team uncovered deeper insight into the challenges and struggles that meeting planners face, and gained specific solutions to better collaborate with planners for greater mutual success.
Over a working dinner, discussion ranged from the state of the meetings industry over the past few years and the outlook for 2012, to communication and relationships and their role in the decision making process, to tools that sales teams can provide to make decision making easier. There were 14 participants, ranging from corporate meeting planners, third party planners, marketing firms, and hotel sales and marketing personnel. Among the key takeaways from the evening, were these unique insights:
The good news is that the overwhelming majority of the participants have seen an increase in the number of meetings they are planning, similar to the number of meetings scheduled prior to 2009. However, there is a “new normal” in terms of how the meetings are happening. The perception that executives are spending money foolishly is still prevalent, which is causing them to scale back from the 5-star/ 5-diamond resorts. This is proving to be a good news story for Sunriver and Destination Hotels & Resorts, as our resorts can offer these groups all the luxury of the 5-diamond resorts without the 5-diamond brand names.
On the flip side, the challenge to this is that the executives and decision makers have been conditioned to expect all the amenities they have grown to love, but at the same price point that was offered to them in 2010 and early 2011. It is getting increasingly harder for meeting planners to help them understand why rates are increasing and concessions are decreasing when it comes to their meetings. As a result, the best thing a hotel sales person can do is to have a total understanding of the group’s objectives as well as budget, so they can help create a package that is a win-win to both parties.
Because companies are being more selective with their meetings, they are striving for more inspiration at the meetings they are holding. They agreed that Sunriver Resort is a great venue to achieve that inspiration and therefore can fulfill these objectives nicely. The group also agreed that when their sales person understands the objectives of their meeting clearly, they are better able to partner and collaborate on ways to create the best meeting experience for their group. Sunriver sales team is made up of seasoned professionals who have been in the industry for years and can help customers achieve these objectives!
Essentially, everything comes down to relationships between the hotel and the customer. When customers feel their hotel team genuinely cares for them and has a vested interest in their success, they will continue to come back time and time again.
