ABT Educational sessions reveal secrets of work with MICE segment and corporate buyers
Scheduled educational sessions of the Russian Association of Business Travel (ABT) devoted to the topics «MICE segment. Promotion of a hotel as a business event venue», «Sales in the hotel industry. Corporate buyers. What you should know to work successfully» took place in the Garden Ring hotel on January 31st, 2014.
The speaker of the educational sessions was Irina Bosshard (Kulagina), an independent hotel and travel consultant and director of the Business and Conference Hotel Attestation Program of the Russian Association of Business Travel. Ms Bosshard has been working in the hotel industry since 1991 and has great experience in working with brand hotels as well as with independent hotels.
According to Ms Bosshard, business travel facilitates business growth. Businessmen travel, acquire new business contacts. Thus, the contact base enlarges and further encourages business travel. In the late 1990-ies video conference technologies started developing. And there was an opinion that meetings with suppliers, customers and partners could be distant. Eventually, it became evident, that personal meetings were much more efficient and no advanced technology could replace face-to-face communication. Hoteliers have to understand that business travel is a high profit segment, because companies pay for their employees’ accommodation. So it is necessary to make maximum effort to make the hotel attractive for business travellers.
The first part of the educational session was devoted to particular aspects of work with the MICE segment, the cobwebs of hotel promotion as a business event venue.
«The hotel, which is regarded as a possible MICE event venue, should have certain properties. First come safety and moderate prices. Besides, the hotel should have a good restaurant and extra services; it is desirable for the staff to have experience not only in accommodating groups, but also in incentive programs arrangement. In order to raise efficiency, try to analyze requests, always respond quickly and avoid excessive advertisement».
Ms Bosshard stressed, that it was necessary to continue to communicate with the customer after the event is over: «Do not forget about the fact that business is done by people, so do not interrupt communication, inform others about your news, change of contents, seasonal offers».
Besides, participants of the educational session learned about the requirements young business travellers imposed on hotels and the ways to adapt hotel services to the requirements of this segment.
The second part of the educational session was devoted to the secrets of work with corporate buyers and business travellers.
«You should always understand that the purpose of a business trip is work, and not leisure. This is why a working desk and good lights in the room, as well as a place to meet partners are so important for a business traveller, Ms Bosshard says. If the hotel is interested in accommodating business events, it should pay serious attention to its facilities and equipment».
All the session participants were unanimous that the topics discussed were very important and useful.
«This is my first ABT educational session and I can say that the knowledge I have got today will be very useful in my future work. Nowadays everyone wants to make the hotel popular with business travellers, but no one has a plan of action. Thanks to Irina Bosshard’s advice I have a clear understanding what to do and will we able to share this information with my colleagues», Ksenia Katamadze, leading sales expert of Izmailovo tourist hotel complex (Gamma, Delta) says.
Natalia Silina, sales expert of Astrus hotel, has pointed out the speaker’s proficiency and experience and admitted, that the topics of the session were of great interest, because there were very few sources of information on working with the business segment in Russia.
Sofiya Dukorskaya
Oleg Abarnikov