Meetings technology tools designed to streamline the RFP process and offer greater scope and efficiency in making rate comparisons are among new products that have been recently introduced, and in other developments, Visa has launched a meetings payment card with expense tracking capabilities.
Worktopia’s Solution
- New from Worktopia is Universal Meeting Solution (UMS), which enables users to search, compare and book space for simple meetings as well as arrange for catering, audiovisual equipment, overnight accommodations and other amenities in one online session. In addition, UMS provides attendee management capabilities, detailed meeting activity reports and enhanced user enrollment tools.
For companies that have pre-negotiated contracts with hotels, Worktopia offers the UMS-Corporate Edition, which loads company-designated rates and other travel-related corporate guidelines into the system.
According to Worktopia CEO John Arenas, UMS is designed to provide “unprecedented visibility” into what companies are spending on small, simple meetings and allow for improved planning and control.
“Companies have developed excellent spending controls over everyday business trips but still have virtually no central control over the booking process for simple meetings,” he says. “Worktopia now provides the means to measure overall expenditures for simple business meetings, ensure regulatory compliance, enforce sound procurement practices and generate savings for discounts based on volumes with each supplier.”
StarCite Products
- In July, StarCite unveiled its StarCite Group Rate Advisor Report, which projects hotel guest room rates for a specific city or region as far as one year in advance.
The projections are based on hotelier information appearing on the StarCite Marketplace, the company’s online system for event venue searches and request-for-proposal submissions. Planners sourced more than 20 million room nights, representing an estimated $7.5 billion in potential meetings business, through StarCite last year, according to the company.
The offering allows planners to analyze hotel options and make decisions based on pricing trends as well as historical information. Using data collected from its database, StarCite can produce reports for any city or region that will provide sleeping room rate ranges and trends up to 12 months ahead.
Once compiled, the data generated by customer-hotel interactions allows StarCite to provide reports on the aggregated rates being offered in metro regions, by type of property and by industry of the company requesting the meetings. Reports will only be available if there are a minimum of five properties to include in the data set. Pricing information on individual properties will not be available.
Planners can purchase specific reports individually or become a subscriber to receive regular reports.
At the same time, StarCite announced an agreement with Amadeus, a global distribution system (GDS), whereby attendees can for the first time book travel through a GDS directly from the StarCite Attendee Management application. The new feature is expected to be available by year’s end. Travel booking is already available through providers like Expedia and Orbitz.
StarCite has also added a registration application to its Small Meetings Solution, event-sourcing software designed for non-professional corporate planners who organize meetings for fewer than 100 people.
The simple registration application features templates, with which planners can easily create an event website as well as e-mail invitations. Although planners cannot modify the templates, StarCite creates the templates for each customer with the customer’s name and logo. The registration page includes forms for obtaining attendee names and contact information as well as meal preferences and arrival-departure times.
Planners can view a variety of simple reports like rooming lists, and they can download the information to electronic spreadsheets.
Visa Meetings Card
- Visa has partnered with meetings tech company Arcaneo to launch the Visa Meetings Card, a purchasing card designed to enable corporate clients to track event-related purchases separately from other business travel or procurement expenses.
According to Darren Parslow, Visa’s global head of commercial solutions, the new card, which includes the features of the existing Visa Purchasing and Visa Corporate payment cards, provides companies with the ability to tailor a card program to meet their specific needs while helping them to reduce costs, streamline operational and payment processes and make more informed business decisions.
“Using payment cards for meetings expenses helps enable companies to improve the efficiency of their spend management processes, gain greater control and visibility over their spending and ultimately drive increased cost savings to their bottom line,” he says.
