What is most clear from Successful Meetings’ “2013 Online Site Selection Survey” is that hotel and site selection companies have to get the mix of information available online right, and that can be tricky. Planners want websites to be easy to use and have the information they need to make a short list of properties to send requests for proposals (RFPs).
“It is convenient to browse and select the sites based on what they have to offer, by just clicking around a webpage. It gives us a better outlook of places we would like to physically check out,” says Amanda Cassidy, meeting planning assistant for medical device maker DepuySynthes. “That being said, we still feel the need to visit the actual location.”
An unappealing part of online site selection is the inability to know how accurate and up-to-date those websites are, according to a number of planners. One respondent mentioned arriving to find that construction had closed off a hallway connecting rooms and meeting space, leaving attendees upset because they had a walk around the property.
For one planner from a handbag manufacturing company, the biggest problem with online site-selection platforms is how generic they can be. “I often find it difficult to clearly communicate all of our needs for a three-day program via an online site-selection program,” he says. “There is often a breakdown in communication regarding our needs.”
Responses from the 130 planners who weighed in on this survey between April 30 and May 15 also highlighted the difficulty that hoteliers and facility managers face in providing site information online. Planners complained about websites not having the information they want in the format they want it. But those formats varied substantially, from big-picture overviews like facility layouts that aren’t cluttered up with too much information to very detailed demands for everything from property videos to images of the chairs on which attendees would be sitting.
Another intriguing finding is that when the planners were asked to rate the importance of the various types of online content that they want from site-selection websites, online RFPs were down at number eight.
Finally, as mobile devices become ubiquitous, facilities that want planners’ business will have to at least enable potential clients to submit RFPs from their mobile devices. While fewer than 1 percent of the respondents said they usually go online via a mobile network, more than one quarter called the ability to submit electronic RFPs via mobile either “important” or “very important.”