HOSPA Webinar - 25th April, 2023

Innovative Tech to Maximise Your Event Sales Opportunity

 

An insightful panel discussion discussing the importance of marketing and technology, to ensure the guest / meeting planner's journey remains simple, effective and straightforward. Panellists discuss how to inject new dynamism using technology to improve internal processes and transform your operations for the better. The webinar reviewed the practicalities of measuring results against your competitive set.

ATTENDEES ​

Jane Pendlebury - CEO, HOSPA (JP)

Ciara Crossan - Founder & CEO, WedPro by WeddingDates (CC)

Feray Özcan - Senior Business Development Manager, Allseated (FO)

Peter Heath - MD, Venue Performance Ltd (PH)

 

NOTES
 

 JP - Good morning everybody and welcome. Thank you for registering and joining us for today’s masterclass which is all about using innovative technology to maximise your event sales opportunity. My guests today are all experts in their niche areas of meetings and events, and I can’t wait to introduce them.

 

It’s 10 o’clock on Tuesday the 25th of April 2023. It’s Spring, it’s bright and I think we’re all feeling very positive today. My name is Jane Pendlebury and I’m the CEO of HOSPA, the Hospitality Professionals Association. We’re due to be with you today for around 30 to 40 minutes which includes time for questions at the end.

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Please pop any questions in the Q&A tab on your browser and if there’s not enough time to answer the queries, we will get back to you afterwards. There will also be a recording and a summary of the key points available on the HOSPA website within 24 hours of the webinar.

 

Today, I’m delighted to be joined by Ciara Crossan from Wedding Pro by Wedding Dates, Peter Heath from Venue Performance, and Feray from Allseated.  We partnered with Allseated last year for our annual conference at HOSPACE, so some of you may already be familiar with it. As I said, thank you for joining us, and we’re going to start with our first expert, Ciara. Can you please tell us a little bit about who you are and what your company does to help the industry?

 

CC - Sure. Firstly, thank you so much for having me, Jane, and it's brilliant to be on a panel with such esteemed company.

 

So my name is Ciara Crossan and I'm the founder and CEO of Wedding Dates which was my original baby that a lot of people would know me from. I started the company 15 years ago, so I've been in the hospitality and wedding niche for a very long time. 

 

During Covid and the various lockdowns, when it got super quiet for businesses like mine, we actually developed a software system called WedPro. It’s designed to support hotels and wedding venues to manage their inquiries and their sales pipeline to improve conversion and guest satisfaction, improving the satisfaction and experience of couples that are inquiring.

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JP - That's fabulous. So clearly you found a gap in the market there, which is something that Peter also did. We know that our HOSPA members really appreciate benchmarking. And your angle, your phasing into that has certainly sparked some interest. Can you also briefly explain Venue Performance and what you do?

 

PH - Hi, Jane. Yes, certainly. Hello everybody. I think the easiest way to describe Venue Performance is to reference another bigger company - what STR  does for beds, we do for M&E.

 

So we're a benchmarking platform for meetings and events venues specifically, that incorporates weddings like Ciara works on. We measure weddings very similarly to STR where you measure the impact and your comp set of performance for bed revenue and activity, we do exactly the same for meetings and events. We're working with HOSPA, the government and DMO’s and associations and all sorts of people because this hasn't been available before. I don’t quite know why, because I've done it, but apparently it was too hard to do. 

 

Anyway, this is up and running and we've got loads of hotels and venues that are our members who are busy beavering away and measuring M&E activity, which is good. 

 

JP - Perfect. Thank you, Peter. And Feray, last but not least, Allseated, the solution's quite far-reaching, isn't it? Can you summarise it in a nutshell?

 

FO - Yeah for sure. Hello everybody, and yes, I actually like to explain our product with a personal story because two years ago before I started to work for Allseated, I was working at Aqua, so 15 years in the hospitality industry. And during that time at Aqua, we were looking for a solution to remotely sell our property.

 

I looked it up on the internet and found a solution at Scandic Hotels that was quite interesting. So I sneaked into this vertical tour appointment and pretended to be a potential customer. So on the day of this vertical tour, I was in the digital twin of this hotel. So most of you probably know this MetaPort tour where you jump from one point to the other, and you have 360 pictures, but the user experience with that was completely different. Why? You were an independent avatar of this hotel and you saw other people walking around the space and you could have direct communication with the other avatars. And during this time when I was there, the salesperson of the Scandic Hotel in Berlin, which I know personally, was exactly the twin, came up and asked me how he could help me. I said, all good. I just want to walk around. And then I saw a different colleague of mine. I used to work with him at Marriott six or seven years ago. And because you see the face of the person and the name and say, I know this Thomas, I went to this avatar, started the conversation.

 

He was sitting in Germany live, in his kitchen, and I was sitting in Cologne in my living room and we met in the digital twin of a Berlin property. So, to sum it up, we create a digital twin hotel where you can create customised spaces as the customer is requesting. So everything is flexible as in life and to show remotely in advance what the upcoming event will look like. So this is Allseated. 

 

JP - Brilliant. Thank you. An interesting story. That sounds great. So Ciara, if we come back to you, you are such an expert on wedding marketing and wedding event planning. Do you want to share some key bits on that and talk about your relatively new piece of technology, and explain how that adds value?

 

CC - Sure. So I mean, we’ve all been to weddings, some of us have participated in them, but we've certainly all been guests at weddings and we know, I mean, even when trends change and different things come in and out of fashion, weddings are very traditional events, and they are recession-proof events as well.

 

They're even pandemic-proof. You know, weddings even went ahead during Covid times and the weddings themselves are very traditional. But I suppose how people plan them has really evolved, not just in weddings, but right across the board in hospitality, consumer expectations are just getting higher and higher every single year. And what we hear in terms of feedback, we survey our couples every year. We survey over 1200 newly engaged people every year. And the feedback that we're getting is there is a little bit of a disconnect between what couples are looking for and what they're experiencing and what the venues are able to deliver.

 

Now, I'm not putting the blame on hotels and venues there because we know ourselves. Again, it's been widely spoken about the staffing crisis in our industry and people that work in events have to wear so many different hats. There are wedding coordinators out there, they do all the getting back to the inquiries, they do the show rounds and negotiate the contracts. They're there on the day itself, they're liaising with the chef. It's such a diverse role in a hotel and in a venue. And now they're being pulled into having to serve breakfast, they have to answer phones at reception, there's so much going on. Let's be real about it. 

 

That's where we saw that disconnect and that's why we developed WedPro. So it's a system that actually automates some of the repetitive tasks for the hotels and venues and helps them with all of that follow-up that's required to nurture and nudge that lead, that couple from their initial inquiry right through the process to booking the show round, after the show round, booking the wedding, counting down to the wedding, all of that.

 

So we developed a system that automates a lot of that, but also it's highly personalised. So the couples are getting a better, more positive experience. And again, we hear real stories from couples saying they inquired to some venues and we heard nothing back, or we just got one kind of generic email and then we heard from other venues who bent over backwards for us and really made us feel special. And I think that's something that hotels and venues need to remember. We're all dealing with targets and stresses and pressures in our roles. But for the couple who's getting married, this is the royal wedding of their life.

 

This is such a huge deal to them, and they want to be made to feel special. We know that couples are sending fewer inquiries than ever before. They used to do a lot of window shopping. When I started 15 years ago, people used to spend their Saturdays driving around to different hotels and venues, touring them, and going for show round appointments.

 

That has gotten less and less, but now they're spending even less on inquiries because they're doing all their research online and they don't want to get bombarded. They don't want to get added to a list. So they're only actually sending inquiries to venues that they're really interested in. So if anybody out there is listening today… To wedding venues, my main message for you is, Couples are sending fewer inquiries, so the inquiries you are getting are gold and you better be minding them, you better be nurturing them, and you better be trying to really improve your conversion rate. It's the old sales funnel. You can throw more into the top, but if you're not good at converting you're just leaking so much out.

 

So I would say focus on the inquiries that you do have and get better at nurturing and converting them using tools like ours and WedPro or other tools to make your life a little bit easier. 

 

JP - Yeah. Amazing. There are lots of things I'd like to go back to there.

 

But given that we are only here for half an hour today I think I need to park those questions and move on to Feray. You did give a tiny summary of Allseated. And I know we've got a video to play. Would you like me to play that first or do you want to talk a little bit first?

 

FO - No maybe one or two sentences before the video because the video will actually show quite well what I just shared with my personal story. Ciara, I can relate to all the things that you just said. I started my first role in the banquet as a waiter, and I do know how often I was sweating because the person who booked the event was completely someone else as the facilitator on the day of the event.

 

These short-term changes don't happen with weddings, maybe because you have lots of detailed conversations, but in general, with events and meetings, it still happens quite often. And technologies like yours or what we will see in a second with ours will definitely help to increase not just the conversion, but also the quality of the service, right?

 

So that you don't have this miscommunication anymore, that you don't stress your team in advance, and that you also give your customer a detailed impression of what he can expect when he comes to your hotel. So Jane, if you want a two-minute video of a nice property in London and it's not so there's Joanna, who's the senior event manager who explains in two minutes quite quickly how she's using the software.

 

V - We at Conference News are here today at the Marriott, London Grovesnor Square to find out how the venue is using a platform called Allseated to change the way that it pitches for events. Let's go talk to them now.

 

As you can imagine, you open for a nice big, airy space, which as I've already said, has its benefits. But equally, it can be really hard to imagine what the space actually looks like on the day of your event. Especially if you have, let's say a conference, you might have multiple events going on, multiple spaces, needing different setups.

 

So using Allseated is just a great tool to be able to put people physically in the room in that 3D sort of setup because you can literally do a virtual walkthrough in the room with them. I would like to ask you to follow me into the amazing ballroom. I can walk around and tell everything about this hotel as you would like to, and the good thing is the client is getting the setup he's requesting. I also helped us during the live site inspection because as you know, the banquet teams are really busy and you can't create the setup as requested just for a site inspection. We said, Hey here, here's the live room, and you get the trust of the client. It's an advantage in comparison to the competitors' set. I think it's a really interesting platform and being able to show clients around virtually and not have them come over from Europe prior to the event. I think that's a real key benefit of this. But thank you very much for showing me around. Thank you very much and I hope to see you soon in this beautiful hotel. 

 

FO - Yep. Actually a good two minutes presentation about the tool themselves. So it's a combination of 3D event diagramming probably most of you are familiar with, but also a sales and marketing tool to remotely experience and communicate within the digital twin of the hotel.

 

And you can do it literally in every room, in every area, and you could do as flexible setups as needed. So it really helps to get the trust and to streamline the expectations between the customer and the hotel or the venue themself.

 

JP - And that works just as well for weddings, as it does for any kind of meeting.

 

FO - Yeah, especially for when it's much more detailed setups and events like weddings, it's even more necessary for social events in general. The power of this tool is quite useful. If you have 100 people in the theatre, it's an easy thing.

 

But if you have a new wedding with a dancing floor, buffet, whatever, it does make much more sense as well to use software like ours. 

 

JP - I can imagine that that saves a lot of time on the venue and also for the client, the guests, whatever, whoever it might be. 

 

CC - I think as well if I can just jump in that a lot of times when if it's a conference planner you know, a professional event organiser, they're very good at understanding room setups and layouts and stuff like that, but people who are planning weddings or other social events, they're rookies.

 

It's their first time doing anything. So a tool like this that can help people visualise, I think is more relevant, I suppose, in those instances, because they wouldn't necessarily ask a person on the street what theatre style versus cabaret style.

 

They might know all those terms because we're in the industry. But for the layperson, it's a minefield. So yeah, I can really, really see the benefit.

 

JP - Brilliant. Thank you for that explanation, that's brilliant. I think that video does it justice as well, and explains what the system can do.

 

So let's skip straight on to Peter. Thank you very much. So you've brought some very interesting, innovative benchmarking into the meetings and event space. Can you just share a little bit more about Venue Performance and what it's got to offer and why people should want to read your reports?

 

PH - Yeah. I think what we'll do is we'll go upstream a little bit because what Feray and Ciara are talking about is actionable. Actions that the properties, hotels, and venues need to take to target customers, like Feray is doing.

 

In terms of the booker and the planner, and also with Ciara, the wedding person that's for some businesses that's a huge market and I think what we do is we work with the team above the planning team. So the revenue directors, the commercial directors, and what we do is we help them really work out how to target their audience, the one that they want to target, and also to measure their performance against their competitors.

 

So, if you've got a cluster of wedding venues in the Midlands, for example, then Venue Performance will be able to show you how your performance is. How you are performing against your competitive set. And you can see lots of data like lead time data, pricing data, and sales data in terms of when inquiries are taken, when bookings are taken, what size, how much the variety, and the lead time work kind of thing.

 

So, we work very much on the planning side and like I said, work with a lot of revenue managers and directors and the commercial team. But what that does give us the ability to do, of course, is to pull back, and this is one of the reasons why we're working with you, Jane and HOSPA, is because not only does the tool, give the individual properties the ability to look at how they are performing, both from a commercial point of view and from a sales channel point of view, but also for the industry itself.

 

Because we've got so much data and we're looking at such a wide variety of different types of properties and sectors, we can spot trends. So a lot of the time that we spend is not necessarily on the competitive side of things because that's for the individual, and they just log into our software and do it themselves.

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But we spend a lot of time looking at the market. So for example, I did some data analysis today, but I looked at the market in general. And for those of you that don’t know of any performance, we do a monthly M&E session where you can just come and see what we are seeing if you like.

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And, there's definitely a cooling down of the market. It's interesting to hear Ciara talking about the different flow of inquiry and confirmation and engagement that they have with the booker as well as with the addition of digital and how that can change the booking process because we track sales as well as events.

 

And what we're seeing is we're seeing it cooling down. So that whole pent-up demand, we call it a bit of feast and famine. You know, post the pandemic, everybody gorged on being able to get back together again. So we saw that major spike in the market and now everything's calming down again.

 

But of course what we're also seeing, or what we're also hearing, is that everybody got very excited by 2022 because most businesses had a pretty good 22. When it comes to events. What we're hearing is a lot of people got very excited by 2022, wrote the budgets for 2023, and of course, the inevitable has happened.

 

You know what goes up must come down. So, the market's coming down again. We're hearing a lot of anxiety around, oh my God, what's going on? Things are calming down and therefore they need to get eyes on the data because they need it, is it just me?

 

Is it my competitors? Is it the market? What's going on? So, in the good times the data makes you check that you're not flying away, in the tough times And I do think that there's going to be a bit of a correction coming because the data shows that.

 

And if I got some stats for you, I picked out some wedding stats as well, actually, interestingly from February to March. So the booking level has been dropping since the beginning of the year, but from February to March, there's been a 20% drop off in bookings made.

 

Okay. Now this is across all events of all sizes. So we're not looking at any sector or anything like that, but a 20% drop off of bookings in terms of the sales contract signed. On the flip side, March saw a 27% spike in events that are happening. So you are now seeing the pent-up demand of events that were booked and then delayed.

 

They're already being planned, but then you are seeing the calming down of the markets. They're sort of coming back down to what I would call a normal or a flow. That rhythm that we're all used to in 2019. Going back to that again, and if we look at the weddings market again, spring to late summer is the key market, and then it all drops off again during the winter, obviously. So we know that. But there are fewer events/weddings in 2023 than there were in 2022. So again, maybe that's calming down again.

 

It is fascinating watching the data. And you can get into all sorts of segmentation, like different sizes of weddings and different sizes of meetings or conferences as opposed to meetings or banqueting, etc. But the overriding message is that things are calming down. And I think that that's possibly a good thing because we're returning back to a bit of a rhythm as opposed to this mad, crazy feast and famine that we've been used to over the last few years.

 

And if anybody wants to know any more about any of that, I'll very happily show you all the data that I've got just to give you an idea of what's happening. But yeah, in the context of weddings and digital, we are finding that that whole process is quite interesting because what you see in the data, then dries back into the teams in terms of actionable insights, in terms of the execution.

 

A lot of direct book, for example, is a big deal as well, and that's going to be very much enabled by Feray’s problems as well. And then obviously into the weddings market, which is a huge market for everybody. You can dive into the real details of that.

 

JP - Ciara, in the research you've done, you mentioned in your opening bit that people did still get married during the pandemic, but we know that maybe they weren't getting the wedding of their dreams and may have done something else afterwards.

 

Does what Peter said follow in the research that you have done as well? 

 

CC - Completely. I feel like I'm a nodding dog here. The whole time Peter was talking, I was just like, yep, yep, yep. We're seeing exactly the same thing. 2022 was all clearing all the backlog. I totally see the same thing as Peter.

 

That backlog, that pent up demand is cleared now. And, definitely, venues are, had, a lot of them had done their budgets and their plans based on those 22 numbers, which was mental, to be honest. We do need to re-benchmark against 2019. And of course, there's a weird quirk in weddings as well, which I say and sometimes people's heads blow off, but, odd number of years, so 20 19, 20 23, etc tend to be not as popular for people to get married. I don't know if it's people throwing things like they want to make it easy to remember their wedding anniversary or something. 

 

PH - I'm just looking. Okay. Ciara, when you said 29 benchmarks against 2019, I shifted my dial to look at 2019.

 

And Oh my God, that is absolutely right. 2019 was relatively calm, 2020 went crazy. And then obviously we know what happened in 2021. So that, but 19 to 20, that's quite fascinating. I can go back even to 2018.

 

CC - In 2019, there was a slump in weddings, wedding inquiries, and weddings, because people were waiting for 2020 people who wanted to get married in 2020. The nice round year in 2019 we were at the National Hotel Marketing Conference and the name of the conference was 2020 Vision. You know, that's all, everything's gonna be brilliant in 2020.

 

And then, of course, we know what happened in March of that year. So it's just a very funny quirk of weddings of those odd number of years. So that's kind of something to be mindful of as well. But, you know, I think it's a combination of the market cooling, and that pent-up demand is gone, but also digital consumers are just getting more savvy, they're just not sending inquiries in the same volume because they are, it's easier for them to get information to sift out various venues based on, you know, virtual tours, you know software similar to what Feray has with Allseated, but even going on people venues, Instagram feeds, etc, they're narrowing down their shortlist from their couches without ever getting in touch with anybody, and they're only getting in touch with venues. They're very, very serious about it. We know that 50% of couples will actually tour only two to three venues before making a decision, and actually 21% of couples will tour one venue and then book.

 

That's it. They're going for one site visit, one. They're viewing one venue, and it's really just to confirm. Everything that they've seen online, you know, the paint is appealing. It looks as if the photos and videos have shown them. They're reading a lot of reviews, and hearing from other influencers, and blogs. They're collating all of that information, and they're only taking the time to either inquire or go to see you if they're very seriously interested.

 

So that's what I mean when I say every inquiry is absolute gold. The other interesting thing as well, just on the tech and the digital side of things is when we did our survey this year, 54% of couples said that they wanted to book their appointment online. Book their tour online and that has jumped massively.

 

That was down 20% last year. So just in a year. It's more than doubled the number of people and that's only going in one direction. Next year that'll be in the sixties or seventies, we're all so used to that online booking facility now for all sorts of different services.

 

You can book your car with the mechanic with the app and an online booking tool these days. Venues have to embrace tech to not only stand out and deal with challenges that are coming from the markets and the data and the benchmarking but also to give their customers a better experience and to ease the workload because they are wearing so many different techs.

 

JP - I guess that's music to your ears then Feray, people wanting to do more online. That's not going to damage your business, is it? 

 

FO - For sure, but it's also from the perspective of a hotel or venue, also beneficial. If I remember back in the days, for every site inspection, it took time, techniques, and preparation, and then you came back missed 10 calls and seven new emails, and if you could sort out the inquiries would come in with a link that people can discover the space in the first step online and then maybe in the second step come to review the room alive. It definitely helps you as well, in regards to time and staffing issues. Anyway, so yeah, definitely music to my ears what Ciara just said. Yeah, brilliant. 

 

PH - Instant book are becoming a major deal now in meetings and events.

 

You're not going to instant book a wedding venue unless you're doing a shotgun or something anyway. But in small meetings you move around the space, maybe even talk to people. And then click the credit card. So for the simple meetings, but still need to have a little bit of TLC when it comes to the setup or how things are gonna be arranged.

 

I think that's definitely the way forward. Because instant booking for the meetings sector and for the hotel industry, that's becoming a major deal now. So yeah, it's all gonna nip in together quite nicely I think, isn't it? 

 

JP - Okay. Thank you. And just to remind everybody listening and watching us today do feel free to put, or pop any questions into, the Q&A box.

 

Somebody's brought up something here about personalisation and saying that actually, you've all referred to personalisation in one way or another. So. It's one of those buzzwords, isn't it? Personalisation got a bit boring a few years ago because everything had to be so personalised because I think we've now embraced it a lot more.

 

So Ciara I think you, especially personalisation, must be top of the list when a hotel or a venue is dealing with a potential wedding planner or wedding guest, bride or groom. 

 

CC - Absolutely. It's huge to reference what I mentioned earlier to the couple planning their wedding. This is their royal wedding or whatever, it's the most important thing for them.

 

And it's really interesting. I really see two trends here. I mean, the venues that are doing this really well are doing it really, really well, and they're winning the business. And whether they're using technology to support them in doing the personalisation or whether they have a big sales and marketing team and they're really putting in the manhours you know, they're doing it really well. And then there are other venues and it's like they're just so overworked, they're so overwhelmed. We talk to GMs or hotel owners or sales and marketing people and say, well, what's your kind of inquiry process?

 

And they say, oh, well, every inquiry that comes in, we reply to them within an hour and it's all personalised and da, da, da, da, da. The reality is not. That's not always the case. And a lot of venues don't necessarily mystery-shop themselves or really dig into, okay, well if the inquiry lands at 11 o'clock on a Tuesday morning, there happens to be nothing else going on.

 

Yes, they will get a personalised reply within the hour. But what if it comes in, you know, on Friday night at 10 o'clock and you're in the middle of a busy service for a different event and people don't care when they have the same level of expectation in terms of a reply and all of that doesn't matter when they send the inquiry. Of course, the majority of wedding inquiries are ironically sent during evenings and weekends because that's when people are on the couch with a glass of wine on their iPad or their laptop doing their planning. They're not necessarily doing that during working hours.

 

We're all so busy at work. When I started the company 15 years ago, before I started wedding dates. I worked in an open plan office and half the women there were just planning their weddings on high-speed internet because back then, 15 years ago, people didn't have high-speed broadband to their homes.

 

So they were doing that during work hours. That's not the case anymore. So it's evenings and weekends and people definitely need to be, venues need systems in place to deal with that. 

 

JP - Absolutely. It's like I always say to people, pick up the phone. It's so much more personal, isn't it?

 

And you pick up the phone and you can resolve things probably that you would take five emails to resolve. You can do it in a five-minute phone call in many cases. Feray from when people are online looking at a particular venue. How much can your tool enable a hotel to personalise for a specific show round?

 

FO - 100%. So in comparison to maybe what is quite familiar and known in the market with the MetaPort scans where someone has taken the picture of the 3D picture and everything stays as it is in this picture. So if you have in this picture a classroom setup, you can't change the classroom setup.

 

We disconnect the MetaPort and we also belong to MetaPort. So the technology behind it is the same. We disconnect the venue and the room with the furniture, you get both separately and can personalise the space as you want. So you have in the backend a normal event diagramming tool as everyone knows but due to the fact that we disconnect those two things and you get your own furniture, your own chairs, tables, whatever you want, your own buffet, whatever it is, and then you can place it as needed and requested. So there are always two, two approaches due to the fact that I know also how stressful life in event management and convention sales is you can have templated rooms and default send links to the templated rooms. Yeah. So not to change your workflow, this is also really mandatory and important to have this kind of solutions because you don't always have the time for every inquiry to do an individual personalised setup. Yeah. But if you have a social event, a must-have, booking a perfect fit, booking what makes your week perfect, and you want to go in advance, the extra mile before you close that business. You can go into the software, choose the room, do the setup as needed, and create an individualised link to a 3D space for this specific setup that has been requested. So yeah, both ways are possible. And the secret behind us, we just disconnect the room from the furniture and make it possible to set it up as in real life.

 

JP - Thank you. And Peter, you haven't been left out of this one. The point was made that you are able to drill down into different types of events, which I think is probably, well, for you, it's a given, but maybe not everyone knows that it's a given. The question was specifically on personalisation from Venue Performance, how do you choose your concept?

 

Can they get the flexibility to choose their own concept if they were to work with you and Venue Performance? 

 

PH - Yes they have and its comp set is the kind where it all starts because you need to make sure you are comparing apples with apples obviously. But I mean they can have as they want so they can have several and then we give them a comp set.

 

We've got a chart that's like a set checker, so you can. You can overlay your events with your competitors to see, or to make sure that you are comparing apples with apples. So, you know, if you back the example of the wedding, if you've got a load of venues around you that you put in the concept, you might want to filter out only weddings up to a certain size, for example.

 

So you can go macro or you can go micro and the devil's always in the detail, isn't it? I mean, I give you a big macro picture because I'm not going into the specifics of venues or regions, but the devil really kicks in when you've got your composite you've got your competitors, you've got several composites, you've got your data filtered, and then you can really find out what's happening.

 

And that sometimes makes for uncomfortable reading, especially as, as Ciara was saying to the sales teams, if they're competitors who have got their game together and got everything sorted and they can see them banging into sales and getting the inquiries and the lead times are going way into the future.

 

And you are lagging behind. Yeah, it can be a couple of sobering charts, but that's the whole point. You know, senior management wants transparency, don't they? They don't want to hear what they think is happening. They want to know what is actually happening. And that's, that's what we do. So yeah, comp sets are, fairly, fairly crucial, I'd say. 

 

JP - And, not this is an obvious thing to say, but not necessarily geographically based. It can be if it's a country house hotel, it could be comparing if someone's going to travel to Bath or maybe they would travel to Oxford or to the South coast or something for the right wedding.

 

PH - So that same happens with conferences and especially nowadays with company away days. People want to get out of the city. So they might go to Oxford, they might go to Bristol, they might go to the Lake District. So you compare types of properties that are not necessarily constricted by the location.

 

But yeah, you've got the freedom to choose whatever you want. It's a full-on ER board of properties that you can choose from. 

 

JP - Fantastic. That's brilliant. Well, I could go on talking about this for hours because I feel that there's so much left to be said, but I did promise everybody we would be done within 40 minutes this morning.

 

So I'd like to thank everyone for listening and for the questions that were put in. If there are any unanswered ones, we will get back to you on those. And a big thank you to Ciara, Peter and Feray. I think we've learned a lot in a really short space of time. And I think perhaps we will have left people wanting more.

 

So if people do want more information, please contact me and I can either give you a quick answer if I know the answer or you'll be introduced to today's experts. So very happy to facilitate that as well. I always say at the end of webinars please remember that the opinions expressed today are exactly that.

 

They are opinions and should be treated as such. If you need formal advice, then please approach your professional advisors or come to me at HOSPA for a referral. You can find a recording of all our webinars and masterclasses with a summary of the key points on our website, hospa.org. And today's webinar should be uploaded within the next few days as well.

 

So if you want to watch it again, great. If you want to recommend it to your colleagues, then we'll send that link to you as well. And finally, whilst we're on the topic of events, Ciara made reference to the National Hotel Marketing Conference, which is coming up on Thursday this week in Burton on Trent.

 

So I imagine a few of the people watching today will be there, and both Ciara and I will be there. So we look forward to seeing you there. There are lots more events on the HOSPA website. And our big one for the year is always HOSPACE, which is this year on the 16th of November at the Royal Lancaster London again.

 

So thank you all very much for listening. Thank you very much for my expert panel, and we look forward to seeing you all again soon. Thank you. Bye-bye.

Thanks