Direct Booking Has Finally Arrived

by | Nov 13, 2020 | For Hoteliers, For Organizers

Since the earliest days of our company, we’ve had the goal of being the first to provide direct booking to the hospitality industry. Well, that day has finally arrived. Groups360 is proud to introduce GroupSync Engage.

Now, for the first time in the hospitality industry, event planners can book guest rooms, meeting space or both in a secure, convenient, online transaction at participating hotels.

In sync with modern buying habits

As event planners become more familiar with digital platforms and more hotel chains bring their products online, they are likely to consolidate their booking efforts onto a single platform to keep things organized. Pre-COVID data shows that instant booking events now represent 47% of total online bookings, which has risen by 11% year over year.

Historically, planners have had to spend an enormous amount of time gathering information to send and respond to RFPs for their events — even for smaller meetings where the burden of scheduling meetings via RFP has been high. With this release, planners around the world may now book their smaller group meetings online within GroupSync at participating hotels.

Likewise, this release also enables hotel properties to sell their guest rooms and meeting space inventory directly through this channel, freeing up their time to focus on higher revenue earning opportunities and more complex proposals.

How GroupSync Engage works

After a meeting planner creates a new group (rooms and space) event, they search for a participating property. Properties that have enabled direct booking will have a guest-room availability indicator and a Book Now button.

Once a planner has selected the property for direct booking, they choose the number of rooms they need per room type (up to nine rooms per room type) and add them to the booking cart.

Once a planner has added rooms to the shopping cart and finalized the room block, they can add meeting spaces from the property to the reservation. In this step, you can also add available amenities and catering options to the meeting space. 

In the final step, meeting planners check out and pay via a secure payment gateway.

To learn more about setting up GroupSync Engage for your hotel, request a demo.