Created by the U.S. Travel Association in 2009, the D.C.-based Meetings Mean Business Coalition continues to showcase and promote the value of face-to-face meetings and events with awareness-raising initiatives like the first annual North American Meetings Industry Day, held this April.
As players across the span of the industry are discovering, the group market delivers greater economic impact than they may have previously known–with much of that impact under-realized or untapped because of budget sensitivity, planning and operational inefficiencies, or under-informed decisions.
Uniquely positioned to solve these issues and unlock the full potential of meetings, events and travel is Dallas-based Lanyon.
Since 1984, the company has evolved technology solutions for managing the changing demands of the meetings, events and travel industries. Now with 13 offices worldwide, Lanyon offers unprecedented insight into the challenges facing planners, buyers and suppliers–and the solutions and products to match.
Clarity in the Cloud
Anthony Miller, the company’s chief marketing officer, affirms Lanyon’s unequivocal belief in the power of face-to-face interaction and engagement.
“When people come together and connect, amazing things happen, relationships are built and business gets done,” Miller says, citing findings from global research firm Oxford Economics that “every dollar invested in business travel results in $12.50 in added revenues and $3.80 in new profits.” Like any investment, of course, generating healthy returns and growth depends on smart, informed planning—which can be challenging without the right management tools.
“On average, companies commit nine percent of their total budget, and up to 24 percent of the marketing budget, to meetings, events and business travel,” continues Miller. “With pressure on justifying and validating these outlays, companies must make intelligent decisions about how they spend that money, from marketing and communications to hotel and venue selection,” he says. “Accordingly, we saw an opportunity to simplify the planning, budgeting and organizing process while optimizing ROI and business outcomes. At Lanyon, we believe that technology is transforming the way corporate meetings, events and travel programs are planned, delivered and measured. It is also reshaping the way hotels and corporations interact and do business. Our mission is to lead that transformation.”
Whether planning one-on-one sales meetings, large flagship conferences or meetings of all sizes in between, Lanyon’s flagship Smart Events Cloud means bidding three-ring binders and spreadsheets farewell in favor of automation, ease and efficiency.
“Scalable for all company sizes, from small businesses to multinational corporations, this software centralizes and automates planning, budgeting, marketing, communications and other functions,” Miller says. “Offering an online database of some 100,000 global hotels and tools for electronic RFP processing, agenda-building, managing exhibitors and speakers, registration, badge-printing, lead retrieval and much more, Smart Events Cloud makes meeting and event planning much easier.”
That’s just the start of the Lanyon advantage. Along with simplifying and streamlining the process, which builds in peace-of-mind for planners while creating a high degree of satisfaction for attendees, Lanyon provides scientific insight into meetings, events and travel performance.
“Companies want to know per-delegate and per-traveler transient costs, to gauge how they are returning or creating value,” Miller says. “Providing visibility into the total spend on meetings and travel, our advanced data and analytics software can integrate with corporate, CRM and financial systems to produce the necessary insight for companies to make informed decisions and maximize their investment.”
From reducing administrative sourcing tasks and overall selling costs to enhancing negotiating leverage and streamlining compliance policies, Lanyon paves a straight path to bottom-line success.
“For planners and attendees, our entire solution is geared to making their meeting, event and travel experience as cost-effective and efficient as possible, so that they can best fulfill their mission of meeting, connecting and doing business,” Miller says.
Lanyon also connects hotels across all categories with corporate buyers—their most profitable customer segment.
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“Increasing transient and corporate group profitability is a major priority for hoteliers,” Miller explains, “and so we developed the Lanyon Smart Hotel Cloud as a complete online marketing, booking and promotional solution.”
Providing exposure to thousands of corporations and associations, the software allows properties to market and up-sell themselves intelligently while automatically responding to a higher volume of electronic RFPs, streamlining hotel room blocks and reservations, ensuring negotiated rates are bookable across all Global Distribution Systems, promoting premium rooms and services, and other business-positive functions.
“Our software saves hotels time and money, while helping them to win significant new business and increase RevPAR,” says Miller. “It’s a clear path to profitability.”
Automated Successes
With industry awareness building around the potent value of meetings and events, companies can ill-afford detours, delays, wrong turns or dead ends. For buyers and suppliers alike, Lanyon replaces spending and ROI guesswork with ease, control and confidence.
Consider the example of Adobe, the global leader in digital marketing and digital media solutions, and its annual Summit event, which attracts more than 6,000 marketing and technology leaders.
“This is a savvy audience that comes looking for an exceptional business experience,” Miller says, “and so for Adobe, attendee satisfaction becomes a key metric for the event.”
For the past several years, Lanyon has enabled Adobe to meet and exceed those expectations with its Lanyon Events solution, which automates everything from online registration and session scheduling to housing management and attendee tracking. “From the moment attendees arrived and were able to proceed straight to conversation, networking and connecting, our automated solutions delivered the desired experience,” says Miller.
Lanyon’s software also enhances the balance sheet. In 2013, Warwick International Hotels set the strategic goal of becoming a global preferred choice for corporate travelers. Implementing Lanyon’s Market Leads solutions to enhance its outdated global distribution and RFP identification and processing systems, the hotelier achieved handsome results.
“Lanyon enabled Warwick Hotels to close more deals and win more business,” states Barrymore Edwards, director of global sales. “We saw our bid opportunities quadruple from 351 bids to 1,360 bids in the first year of implementation.” That’s an increase of 258 percent, resulting in 12 new corporate accounts with enhanced business for its 55 locations and 8,500 hotel rooms ever since.
The Winning Combination
Lanyon’s marketplace dominance is reflected with having its solutions in place at more than 80 percent of the Fortune 100. These include all top 10 technology, hospitality and pharma companies, nine of the 10 leading finance and communications companies, and eight of the top 10 defense firms.
Supporting its software with guidance from expert event consultants, along with playbooks for social media, attendee management and other areas, the company delivers transformative, if not revolutionary, results.
“Embracing the vision of ‘meetings mean business’ means working smarter to optimize the investment in transient and group travel,” Miller says. “We believe passionately in simplifying meetings and event planning while coming fully to terms with ROI—the key is having the right tools, solutions and support in place to make it happen.”
