Attracting Event Planners When You Buy a Hotel

Whether you are a seasoned or first-time hotelier, one of your first jobs is to market your newly acquired hotel property. The opportunities for hotel patronage by groups is endless, but one of the most lucrative markets is with event planners. Just as you planned thoughtfully to buy a hotel, searching through many hotel listings for the perfect property, you need to thoughtfully plan how to attract event planners to your property.

Marketing Your Property to Event Planners

Event planners seek, first and foremost, to find properties that will meet all of their client’s event needs in one place – hotel rooms, meeting rooms, and menu choices as well as technology needs. After you buy a hotel, make sure you know your newly acquired hotel’s amenities. Make sure the basics, as well as extras such as recreational opportunities, WiFi and other services, are included and referenced by your sales staff and marketing materials.

WiFi is particularly important to business clients, and it is important that your hotel’s WiFi services can accommodate your maximum number of attendees at a given event.

After you buy a hotel, partnering with your local visitor and convention bureau can also help “spread the word” about your property and help you provide event planners with comprehensive information local to your hotel property.

Event Planners Reward Program

One way to help ensure repeat business and establish a strong relationship is to offer a customer reward program to event planners. For many, value added options and redeemable perks are attractive enticements. As you buy a hotel, consider how you can offer event planners value added options to their groups or even redeemable individual services, such as complimentary spa services, for themselves.

Offering Mobile Event Apps

Technology is now augmenting traditional event planning brick-and-mortar items, such as the number of meeting rooms, as a key desirable for event planners. Mobile event apps offer attendees the ability to glean traditional conference information via a downloadable phone app, instead of via a paper program. Hotels have the ability to offer these apps to event planners as an enticement to use a hotel facility with the most up-to-date technology available. Not only can the hotel mobile event app dispense information to the attendees, but there is also the opportunity to advertise hotel amenities. As you buy a hotel, be sure to consider the hotel’s existing technology network and upgrades that may possibly be needed.

As You Buy a Hotel

Southeast International, the Midwest’s leading hotel brokerage, is ready to help you through the complex maze of identifying the hotel or motel property that meets your specific business needs. Contact us today to start the process of finding the perfect hotel property for you.