Just 25 minutes outside Atlanta in Stone Mountain, Ga., corporate meetings were the biggest market segment for the high-end Evergreen Marriott Conference Resort until two years ago. After the market crashed, the 336-room property decided to drastically switch its focus.
"We were a very corporate-oriented hotel, but when the economy went down, we started fishing in different ponds," says Warren Woodard, director of sales and marketing for the resort. We ramped up our government business. In 2008, it was 6 percent of our total business and it went up to 12 percent in 2009."
To accommodate its new market segment, the property decided to relax its pricing structure and offer extras to groups.
"We’ve gone through a big structural change," Woodard says. "We are willing to work within per diems and offer both CMP and al a carte. We’ve found that planners want to work within their per diems, but they also want value-adds such as breakfast included and high-speed Internet. We’ve been able to work within that."
While working within per diems has decreased spend per room, it has also allowed the property to keep occupancy levels healthy, Woodard says.
Evergreen Marriott Conference Resort doesn’t plan to veer away from government business anytime soon and its numbers reflect a dedication to the market.
"For 2010, our booking pace in the government sector is up 200 percent this year," Woodard says. "We have nearly 3,000 government rooms on the books this year as compared with 600 at this time last year. This is because we have been willing to be flexible."
