Over the last year, you’ve been ferociously planning for your event and everything leading up to the big day. You’ve spent months curating the look and feel of your event floor and experience in the hopes that event participants will return year after year. But, despite all that planning, there is often one thing that gets overlooked – the housing desk!
More often than not, a positive hotel experience leads to repeat customers, which is exactly what you want. Once your event participants are in the habit of booking in the block, they’ll be more likely to do it again in the future. Did you know that a well-executed onsite desk can generate up to 25% of your total event reservations? To help you get started, here are five easy ways to promote your housing desk.
1. Secure a High-Traffic Location
The three most important rules of business: location, location, location. Position your housing desk near event registration check-in to take advantage of the high-traffic area. The area next to the CVB desk promoting next year’s host city is another great option. As people get excited about the next destination, asking them to book their hotel room becomes an easy sell. Plus, if your event is being held in a big city, then you’ve probably thought about compression over next year’s dates. A risk of compression means that booking ahead isn’t just the responsible thing to do – it’s necessary.
And speaking of registration, any exhibitor planning to attend the following year will be interested in space draw while onsite. Consider this area a prime target to capture and connect with exhibitors. If they’re already planning for their booth location, they should plan their hotel stay too, making it a one stop shop.
Many events that draw international attendees offer a special international pavilion for participants with language-specific needs. Consider adding an additional housing desk to connect with international show goers too.
2. Add Signage and Advertise the Housing Desk
Avoid being the catch-all desk for questions like, ‘where can I find the bathroom?’ To keep your hotel reservation desk from getting lost in the sea of thousands of exhibitor booths, add eye-catching pop-up banners and use clear and concise language, like Hotel Reservations, so passersby clearly understand what happens at the desk. Add hotel desk directional signage around your show floor and include the desk location on your digital displays to make your desk as easy to find as possible.
In addition to signage, consider promoting the desk location through a variety of different mediums. An email campaign or a mobile push notification alerting participants of the housing desk hours, location and re-book services are effective ways to grab their attention and remind them of the benefits to booking their hotel room early.
Print outs are another tried-and-true method to help spread the word. Add print pieces to the hotel desk, promoting the desk location and hotel information, as a takeaway for those passersby that are interested in re-booking at some point during the event.
And who could forget about your official show publication? Drop in a hotel-specific message or reserve space for ads to promote the desk.
3. Engage With Live Re-book
Having a housing desk onsite offers a great way to connect directly with your attendees and exhibitors and extends the customer service experience. It not only allows guests to seek face-to-face reservation support, but also promotes the relationship with the event’s official housing partner. Now take it one step further – if you can open housing for next year’s event, it offers a major convenience factor for event goers. Allowing participants to re-book their hotel room is one of the most crucial ways to increase the number of event participants booking in your room block.
To make sure you have all the right tools to support event goers, start with the basics: Plan ahead for electrical hookups, Internet access and phone connections. This is key to offering the best customer service experience.
4. Offer an Incentive Promotion
Make hotel bookings fun! Consider working with the hotels in your block or your city CVB to come up with raffle prizes as an incentive to book onsite.
At the North American Spine Society 2018, the account team collaborated with Marriott hotels and the Los Angeles CVB to provide LA Go cards, Marriott Rewards points, complimentary stays and upgraded rooms as part of an onsite raffle program. Sweetening the deal to book onsite is another way to keep your event participants booking in the block year after year. Who doesn’t love a free hotel night?
Looking for ways to reward your event attendees? Consider closing housing immediately following the event. This strategy gives your event attendees first priority to book onsite and makes them feel valued in the process.
5. Connect Face to Face
Have you ever wondered why some exhibitors don’t book directly in the block? At onPeak, our Exhibitor Group Analysts participate in Exhibitor Connect, a one-on-one personal meet and greet onsite with exhibitors to help plan for next year. Building relationships onsite and interacting face-to-face with event goers is key to building trust and in the end, your event’s hotel block.
“There is something special about having the main problem solver and path smoother on the ground to put our exhibitors at ease and allow them to focus on other event-related matters,” says Nicole Pemberton, Director of Exhibitor & Group Services at onPeak. “Through strong professional relationships, EGA’s keep our retention rates high and continue to build our customer base.”
Not all exhibitors book in the official block, but thanks to our Exhibitor Connect program, EGA’s help you understand why. Having a team in place to discover this information helps to round out hotel contracting and plan ahead for following years.
If housing for next year isn’t open yet, leave your event goers with something to look forward to. Start an email list and follow up as information becomes available. After your event, consider sending a thank you email along with a satisfaction survey to keep the dialogue open and make your event participants feel important. Gathering this feedback will not only help you to make improvements for the next year, but also keep registrants engaged in your event and interested in returning year after year.
As the leader in event and convention housing, we understand the importance of creating the most successful and memorable event experiences year over year and that there are so many pieces to this puzzle. Having a memorable housing desk presence onsite and implementing any number of these strategies is another important piece to this puzzle that will help you to promote your housing desk for years to come. Give your housing program the attention it deserves and make the housing program as important as any other activity at your event. If you’re unsure of where to start, have no fear! onPeak is here to help support you and your hotel program every step of the way.
