Event planning process is eased with web portals for hotels and attractions worldwide.In a nod to meeting planners' ever-present time crunch, two hotel companies, as well as a Boston-based collective (of three hotels, two attractions, and a meetings venue), have launched web portals for group bookings.
At
www.jalhotels.com/mice, planners can enter an event's criteria and find a suitable venue among the properties of Nikko Hotels International and its parent company, JAL Hotels Co. Ltd., which has 59 hotels worldwide, including 13 in the mid-price Hotel JAL City brand in Japan.
Meanwhile, the new Ascend Collection is a portfolio of 23 boutique and historic properties across the U.S. and Puerto Rico. Grouped together by Choice Hotels, a franchisor, the group can be accessed—and booked—at
www.ascendcollection.com.
The collection includes the Golden Hotel, outside Denver, which has just 62 rooms but 40,000 sf of meeting space, as well as the Baechtel Creek Inn & Spa, a 43-room, retreat like property outside San Francisco where the largest meeting room is 560 sf.
Sites like these are helpful for meeting buyers, said Choice spokeswoman Christie Gregovich. "This can help meeting planners who are looking for something out of the way, or for properties with character," she said.
Some resourceful Beantown suppliers, meanwhile, have banded together in a local effort.
The Marriott Copley Place, Sheraton Boston Hotel, Westin Copley Place, Copley Place Mall, the Shops at Prudential Center, and the John B.Hynes Convention Center are all participating in "3-2-1 Connect," a program offering more than 3,100 guest rooms, over 400,000 sf of meeting space, and access to some 200 stores and restaurants, consolidated into one contract.
For more information, go to
www.3-2-1connect.com.
Originally published Feb. 2, 2009