Successful Meetings - July 2008 - (Page 18)

News & Analysis > Technology Online Booking Evolves The Hotel Electronic Distribution Network Association (HEDNA), with travel industry research company PhoCusWright Inc., published in mid-May a white paper entitled “Enabling the Online Marketplace for Meetings: A Toolkit.” The report, created with supporting data from PhoCusWright’s research, describes the balance of interests between customers’ needs for visibility, control, and access to preferred programs versus hoteliers’ needs to optimize revenue and control distribution of availability of guest rooms and meeting space. The report noted that the opportunity for automation in searching, comparing, and acquiring space and services for small meetings has never been more compelling. Also, HEDNA’s Group Committee found that while technology already allows planners to book meeting space, group room nights, and manage attendees in real time, it is not yet possible to do all of it in a single online session. Also examined is the question of how fast online migration will be, and how the balance of interests among corporate and leisure group meeting planners, travel distribution systems, and hotels will evolve. The white paper will help hotels assess readiness for deployment of an online marketing strategy offering real-time booking of meeting facilities, simple catering, audiovisual equipment, and guest rooms. It also serves as a practical resource for planning an online booking solution for small groups and simple meetings of up to 75 attendees. According to PhoCusWright research, more than two-thirds of corporate meetings in the U.S. have 50 or fewer attendees, making the market ripe for such solutions. —Robert Carey > Technology Visa Debuts Meetings P-Card Visa has launched a purchasing card especially for meetings, following the path blazed by American Express. The new card is available initially to meeting planners in the U.S. and Canada, with launches planned for the European Union in the third quarter and Asia-Pacific in 2009. “The solution provides not only the back-end reconciliation reporting capabilities, but also allows for meeting planners to plan at a detailed level up front,” says Louis Goodson, senior business leader for Visa Commercial Solutions. He says the meetings card would combine features from Visa’s existing corporate and purchasing cards. To give its purchasing card the required meetings management tools, Visa is partnering with meetings tech punch last fall by American Express, which partnered with StarCite to create a Web-based service integrating StarCite’s e-sourcing and planning tools with Amex’s payment, reconciliation, and analysis reporting. The partnerships between corporate card companies and meetings tech providers allow planners to further streamline the meetings process, says meetings tech consultant Corbin Ball. “It makes it easy to post expenses to different budget centers, and to reconcile them, as well,” Ball says. “It’s [about] controlling spend, but it’s another step toward digitizing the business process.” —Christopher Hosford company Arcaneo, whose Metron product allows users to view actual spend against a particular meeting’s budget. In teaming up with a meetings tech company, Visa was beaten to the 18 mimegasite.com JULY 2008 SUCCESSFUL MEETINGS http://mimegasite.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Successful Meetings - July 2008

Successful Meetings - July 2008 Contents Editor's Note Industry Trends Suppliers Newsmakers On the Record Technology Newsmakers Calendar Planner Spotlight Management Matters Meetings Law Websites of the Month Mouth for Sale Pre-Event On Site Tools of the Trade Pre-Event Initial Success Strong Medicine Risky Business Places & Spaces Birmingham Kentucky Georgia & the Carolinas Hong Kong Melbourne Gurus

Successful Meetings - July 2008

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