GroupSync Engage will provide real-time rates and availability for planners seeking to book meetings at all Omni Hotels & Resorts locations
Groups360 is pleased to announce the launch of GroupSync Engage, the hospitality industry’s firstintegrated direct booking solution for groups, at Omni Hotels & Resorts. Through GroupSync, anyone booking a meeting or event will be able to instantly book group rooms and meeting space online beginning with Omni’s four managed Dallas-based hotels and extending to almost all properties in North America by the end of this summer.
GroupSync Engage is reshaping the hospitality industry in a way that makes booking groups simple, transparent and efficient for both hotels and meeting and event planners. Omni is the first major brand and noninvestor to sign up for the technology.
“We take great pride in being innovators in the meetings and events industry, so we jumped at the opportunity to adopt paradigm-shifting technology destined to change the way hotels have been booking groups. We’re dedicated to creating unforgettable experiences for meeting professionals and their guests, which is why all of our hotels have ample programming across outlets so that guests can enjoy their stay outside of the business setting, too. At an Omni, it’s not just another convention or work trip.” — Peter Strebel, president, Omni Hotels & Resorts
Group Bookings, Simplified
Omni and GroupSync Engage offer real-time availability and group rates so that planners can book guest rooms, meeting space or both, as well as food and beverage, and audio-visual equipment — all completely online. Simplifying booking eases the planner’s workload and frees up hotel staff and crucial resources at a critical time in the industry’s recovery.
“Omni is an important brand to feature in the GroupSync direct booking marketplace, as these properties embody not only luxury experiences but also the highest standard of service for meeting planners. As meeting specialists, Omni staff will greatly benefit from how GroupSync Engage automates group bookings for smaller meetings, giving them back invaluable time to focus on larger, more complex events.” — Kemp Gallineau, CEO, Groups360
Meeting planners can visit groups360.com to tour the technology and gain access to the GroupSync platform.
Omni Hotels & Resorts has more than 50 properties in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, with a combined total of approximately 21,000 rooms.
Groups360’s CEO, Kemp Gallineau, recently participated in a Q&A with Travel Daily Media on how the company is helping drive recovery for the hospitality industry.
How is GroupSync helping hoteliers maximize revenue from their group business?
Groups360’s number one priority is to bring transparency, simplicity and objectivity to group bookings for both hoteliers and meeting planners. We’ve spent seven years building solutions for both suppliers and planners to fulfill this goal, and that’s where we’ve been directing our energy during the pandemic while business was down. GroupSync is a comprehensive software-as-service platform that enables suppliers to distribute inventory, engage with planners, and optimize group revenue.
Kemp Gallineau, president and CEO of Groups360, talks about why hoteliers need tools to simplify and automate their processes, now more than ever.
Now more than ever, hoteliers need tools to simplify and automate their processes. Many properties are still operating with fewer staff members, so they need ways to do more with less. That’s why GroupSync is an immensely valuable resource in times like these, as well as moving forward.
GroupSync’s streamlined RFP process produces more targeted and qualified leads to better pair hotels with the right groups. Hoteliers can boost their bottom lines by allocating group inventory through multiple distribution channels at a low cost.
GroupSync is also the first sourcing and event solutions platform to offer instant online booking of hotel meeting space and guest rooms. This functionality, which we call GroupSync Engage, makes bookings easier for planners of less complicated meetings and frees up hotel staff to focus on larger, higher-value events.
How has the advent of instant online booking for groups changed the industry?
GroupSync Engage is an affordable way for hotels to distribute inventory and increase revenue. Hotels can offer a private-label, branded hotel website with real-time availability and direct booking for guest rooms, meeting space, F&B, and A/V. Or they can choose to allocate rooms and space through multiple distribution channels to maximize revenue.
GroupSync Engage solves a long-standing frustration among planners, which is the lack of visibility into hotel availability and pricing. Hotels across all brands worldwide are in the process of integrating this new functionality into their reservations systems, which will increase group business with less effort.
How do you see the industry changing in the post-Covid world and what will be your role?
Our current focus is to help the hospitality industry recover from the fallout of the pandemic, particularly hoteliers who are looking to do more with less. Now is the time to automate many formerly manual tasks — RFP responses, marketing and promotions, rooming list management, and booking smaller meetings — and GroupSync has solutions for each of these pain points.
I think there are things hoteliers and meeting planners can control and things they can’t, such as how vaccines are administered, corporate travel policies, and the level of confidence planners and attendees have about events. And then the other main thing is change management. What is the new normal, and how do we help people adapt to that new normal, whether it’s more online transactions or more hybrid meetings? The technology exists to facilitate these ways of doing things, but people have to change their habits and behaviors in order to understand and use the tools.
As an industry, we have a chance to embrace what’s new and create what I would call better value for planners and event organizers, hotel owners and management companies, as well as guests and conference attendees. Over the next 12 to 24 months, we have a great opportunity to bring together the different facets of the marketplace in a way that creates a more successful interaction.
How will the hospitality industry be different in the post-Covid era?
I think event planners and hoteliers have been investigating technology solutions and exploring what the comeback looks like. Everyone’s going to have to adapt, from an event planner perspective to your own policies as a hotelier. Not only has the time allowed everyone to reevaluate how to come back, but I would argue there will be better services available that aren’t necessarily tied to the pandemic. Meaning, if I have a chance to reevaluate my business when it’s closed, I tend to do a deeper dive and greater soul searching on what I need to be best in class.
While technology will be a huge part of the comeback, I think it has helped everyone to reflect on questions like, how do I make my meetings better? Who really needs to go to those meetings? How do they become more effective? Hoteliers are asking themselves, how do we provide better guest service? What does check-in look like? How do I understand what is needed for online booking? There’s something to be said for the shutdown that will make everyone better at what I would call the simple things but also be able to solve for some of the more complex issues we’ll have to deal with.
What are Groups360’s expansion plans in the near future?
In May 2020, Groups360 opened an office in London to better serve our clients in the EMEA region. In August 2020, Groups360 acquired technology that we now call GroupSync Optimize to provide the group housing and attendee engagement tools in GroupSync. With this acquisition, Groups360 has expanded our sales efforts into the APAC region.
We completed the acquisitions of this intellectual property right before the pandemic started in order to round out the pieces we needed to offer instant online booking of guest rooms and meeting space, as well as housing and attendee engagement solutions.
We have been hiring additional developers and expediting our technology development to equip hotels and meeting planners with powerful tools to fuel recovery and help our industry thrive moving forward. In addition to development, we’re working to onboard and integrate hotels that are launching the instant booking functionality so that when meetings return, our technology will be ready to go.
What new initiatives is the company planning? Any new partnerships and plans this year?
Our focus for the rest of 2021 will be integrating and onboarding hotels that are using the direct group booking technology in the GroupSync platform. Our plan is to continue simplifying the process of booking rooms and space online and continue to incorporate user feedback to drive our industry forward.
This is going to be a big year for us. We’re planning a series of announcements about partnerships and engagements with hotel brands worldwide. Groups360 will continue to build, acquire and engage with technology that brings the planner, supplier and attendee together to create successful events and meetings around the world.
Kemp Gallineau is president and CEO of Groups360, which he cofounded in 2014 to simplify and transform the way meetings are booked. He has been in hospitality for 21 years. Prior to Groups360, he worked for Gaylord Entertainment Company, now part of Marriott International, where he started as vice president and assistant general manager at Gaylord Palms Resort and Convention Center in Orlando, Florida. He later rose to senior vice president and chief sales officer for Gaylord Hotels in Nashville, Tennessee.
Join us for a webinar designed especially for hotels and suppliers in Europe, Asia and Australia seeking ways to speed recovery as we emerge from the pandemic. In this free 30-minute presentation, you will discover how to improve your group business through better strategy and customer service.
WEBINAR: Three Ways You Can Recover Faster with Group Business
After a tough and tumultuous year, hotels around the world are operating with fewer staff and need to improve efficiency. As hospitality reopens and hotels begin to see an increase in booking activity for meetings and events, will you be ready to capitalise on increased demand?
Join hotel sales experts Steven Hopkinson and Dan Humby for a conversation about how to better engage with your customers, market your assets, and optimise your group business.
Gain insights into:
Current hotel survival strategies
Available resources to train and empower staff
Emerging tools to outsource manual tasks
Better ways to distribute inventory and deliver value
Untapped revenue streams for immediate cash flow
Technology for groups that is reshaping the industry
Join us for a webinar designed especially for hotels and suppliers seeking ways to speed recovery as we emerge from the pandemic. In this free 30-minute presentation, you will discover how to improve your group business through better strategy and customer service.
WEBINAR: Three Ways You Can Recover Faster with Group Business
After a tough and tumultuous year, hotels across the U.S. are operating with fewer staff and need better efficiency. Hotels are beginning to see a surge in booking activity for corporate events and other meetings for the second half of 2021. Are you ready to capitalize on increased demand?
Join hotel sales experts Chris Cigna and Ryan Morris for a conversation about how to better engage with your customers, market your assets, and optimize your group business.
Gain insights into:
Current hotel survival strategies
Available resources to train and empower staff
Emerging tools to outsource manual tasks
Better ways to distribute inventory and deliver value
Untapped revenue streams for immediate cash flow
Technology for groups that is reshaping the industry
When borders closed in places like Singapore to contain the spread of the coronavirus, area hotels could no longer rely on international visitors or groups attending meetings and events. As a result, hoteliers have had to think up creative ways to drive revenue despite the restrictions.
After automating housing promotions and voucher sales at the end of 2020, InterContinental Singapore received a needed boost to revenue and cash flow, while reducing booking costs and expanding the hotel’s customer base.
Vouchers generate immediate cash flow
When Gerrit Luchau, director of sales and marketing for InterContinental Singapore, discovered technology designed to optimize hotel revenue, he and his team came up with creative ways to “put it through its paces.”
After implementing GroupSync Optimize to create, sell and manage the redemption of gift certificates and vouchers, the hotel processed its first order: 770 vouchers for a travel magazine worth SGD$70,000 in room nights and F&B.
“The whole process took five minutes,” said Luchau. “Considering how we used to manually print, process, and track vouchers, this was an immense time saver.”
Since that first order, the hotel has sold thousands more vouchers and prepaid wedding packages, generating approximately $408,800 between October 2020 and March 2021.
Housing tools drive room sales
To entice local residents to visit the property, InterContinental Singapore experimented with experience-led promotions that centered on suites and deluxe rooms, niche communities, dog lovers and “work from hotel” options.
Luchau’s team maximized exposure through social media channels and key opinion leaders who were influential among travelers. The various housing promotions generated almost SGD$446,000 over the course of six months, while saving countless staff hours inputting reservations and accepting payment details.
Hotels of all sizes can benefit from the ingenuity demonstrated by InterContinental Singapore. Learn more about housing tools and voucher sales for your hotel.
How your hotel can better manage group housing to increase revenue and customer satisfaction
After a year of devastating losses for the hotel industry, recent industry surveys point to a surge in booking activity for corporate events and other meetings for the second half of 2021. Hoteliers should prepare now for this surge in demand by adopting technology that will improve efficiency and allow you to do more with less.
As group business bounces back, one process that has long awaited automation is housing and attendee management. Adopting the right technology will help you save labor costs, earn higher revenues, and offer both planners and attendees a higher level of customer service.
Save Costs and Increase Revenue
The most immediate reason to invest in housing technology is to reduce or eliminate certain costs and capture lost revenue from groups that stay at your hotel.
Many hotels in the current environment are operating on a shoestring staff, with key players providing cross-operational service. You need to save time and energy in any way possible. A good housing solution will cut the high labor costs associated with call centers, as well as the old-school rooming list and the time-consuming manual data entry that goes with it.
For best results, the platform should sync with management systems such as CRS, PMS, revenue management, and sales and catering.
To maximize your group revenue potential, your hotel needs the ability to promote and sell upgraded room types, shoulder nights for extended stays, and amenities and other add-ons to attendees. Some tools can help hoteliers add 25% to their bottom line without any additional effort.
Consider the Planner’s Needs
When it comes to housing, both planners and hoteliers have reason to drive the process. Hoteliers benefit because they can better manage their brand reputation while providing a differentiating service to the planner.
Planners often prefer to manage the inventory in their room block, especially when certain groups place a high demand on particular room types, such as suites, double doubles, or double queens.
Both planners and hoteliers have a vested interest in receiving real-time reporting and driving strong pickup — the planner wants to avoid attrition fees, and the hotelier needs insights for revenue management.
The current process only gives hotels 30 days’ notice as to how close to the total rooms in the block were actually sold. For a thousand-room hotel, having zero visibility into a 50-room block might not matter so much. But it’s a considerable risk to the boutique hotel who may have allotted half their inventory.
Look for features that enable planners to:
Upload rooming lists for group blocks
Allow attendees to book and manage their own reservations
Include information about hotels and proximity to the event
Book multiple rooms at once
Control inventory in room blocks before the cutoff date
Manage attrition and adjust the room block to avoid penalties
Add in rebates for additional ancillary revenue
Collaborate with the hotel and see real-time activity
A tool that serves both the planner and the hotel will be robust enough to be effective but also easy enough for everyone to use.
Put the Attendee Experience First
Automating housing and attendee management becomes even more important the more complex the event becomes. Under the current process, group guests are anonymous to the hotel until they arrive on-site. This lack of guest information not only hurts your bottom line — it hurts the attendee experience.
Some planners have to coordinate housing for citywide conventions that span multiple hotels around a single or multiple venue points. When surveyed for their experiences traveling to these citywides, responding attendees noted a number of frustrations that resulted in almost half of them booking rooms through transient traveler channels instead of the room block.
These frustrations and misperceptions included:
Lack of availability at their preferred hotel
Misbelief that room-block rates are always more expensive
Lack of room-type variety or inability to choose room type
Loss of perks from loyalty programs
Attendees need to be able to easily book their reservations in a room block, pick their room types, and enjoy the service they expect from their level of loyalty membership.
Hotels should invest in modern, up-to-date technology that gives everyone the essential features they need. The end result: your property saves on labor costs and earns increased revenue, while giving planners and attendees an experience that will heighten your brand reputation and result in repeat business over time.
Jonathan Burleson is vice president of account management for Groups360. As an original founder of Groups360, Jonathan led the sales team from 2013 to 2019. He now oversees total account management for customers of the company’s full-service advisor division, helping clients find the best solution for all aspects of their meeting execution.
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