Quality or quantity
Peter Gray, an independent Motivation Consultant, presents a regular Business Events News feature on current issues in the Conference and Incentive industries.
THE hotel booking sites we now see advertised ad nauseam on television were originally conceived as a way to sell ‘last minute’ accommodation that the hotels themselves had not sold. Nowadays the same booking sites are often the mainstay of hotel accommodation sales for many properties. The fact that these booking sites insist on rates of commission far higher than is normally granted to a travel agent - and often on items for which commission is not normally paid - and are accompanied by some very specific conditions which endeavour to insist that the sites cannot be undercut, even by the hotels themselves means that the consumer is not always best served.
The same thing happened in the UK several years ago - pre Internet - when ‘bucket shops’ - usually sales outlets which were not covered by ABTA or IATA guarantees - sold airline tickets at a fraction of the cost of a normal airfare. Sometimes the consumer lost out because there were some pretty shady bucket shops around, however although the airlines railed against the use of such outlets they frequently depended upon them to fill otherwise halfempty aircraft.
Now online conference software companies are getting in on the act. I frequently receive offers about accommodation I could use to satisfy the needs of my clients. And this is where I draw the line. My company and that of many of my incentive industry colleagues has been built on the quality and integrity of the services we offer and, where an incentive travel reward is involved, this means personally checking out the hotels we use and establishing a relationship with the sales team and the management. We also take pride in personally matching our clients’ requirements with the hotels we recommend, not leaving it to someone else whose main motivation is profit first and client satisfaction a poor second.
In these days of busy company executives it is often not possible to arrange site inspections where the clients can experience hotels and venues themselves. While this is the ideal, if it isn’t possible then the client will rely heavily on our recommendation - and this is only given when we are satisfied that we have obtained exactly what the client requires. Good enough simply isn’t good enough!
There are many factors to be taken into consideration and this is part of the initial brief we request from our clients. Incentive Travel Rewards used to be referred to as ‘building dreams’ and this isn’t achieved by a third party with little or no idea about what the client wants to achieve or who the participants in the incentive program are. It also muddies the water insomuch as hotels are now required to pay commission to parties not involved in the negotiation - money often passed back to the client because of a management fee structure.