Sherman, CT — PhoCusWright, a travel, tourism, and hospitality research firm, released a report last month in conjunction with Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International that details expected online market opportunities related to meetings and group travel. The report, "Groups and Meetings: Market Opportunity Redefined," estimates that the U.S. group and meetings market will hit $175 billion by 2008 — with 41 percent of all travel booked online.
The number "might look large because of the definition we used," explained Lorraine Sileo, vice president of information services for PhoCusWright, which defines group travel as two or more households traveling for a common purpose. "On the leisure side of group travel, we looked at two or more households — hotels usually look at 10 or more rooms, and airlines don't really look at smaller groups. It's important to recognize small groups because they look, think, and act [like other groups]. There are different kinds of meetings, but regardless of the purpose, it's still group travel."
"I think that people would argue that [broader] definition of a group," said Jeff Rasco, principal with meetings technology consultant Tech3 Partners, based near Austin, TX, though he does agree that the group market is ready for change. "We've been saying for the past couple of years that the group travel market is monstrous and that it's not going to just lay there and not be discovered."
As the general population becomes more used to booking personal travel online, PhoCusWright predicts that the use of digital tools will carry into the meetings market. Online booking will be easiest to implement for small, sleeping-room-only meetings, but will slowly evolve to include larger meetings. The meetings industry is "ripe for moving into online," said Sileo. "Eventually things have to change."
PhoCusWright estimates that travel and meeting space for large conventions will eventually be booked online, but barriers for that sector include lengthy lead times, the importance of relationships between hospitality sales personnel and planners, and the complexity of large meetings.
Corporate meetings will be a much larger portion of business booked online than association meetings. In large part, this is based on the fact that associations are slower to adopt new technologies; they don't want to overwhelm members with too much change at one time, according to the report.
"Maybe the booking of travel would be the first to go [online] and certainly the registration of attendees, but we didn't look at [the latter], just at travel," explained Sileo of the association market.
"I agree, wholeheartedly, that we, as an industry, are slow to adopt technology," said Rasco. "We look at every option other than doing it more efficiently." He said research into e-commerce is "probably what we needed all along" to jump-start the process of moving online.
For Ann Marie Moayedi, Madison, CT-based national director of sales for Aramark Harrison Lodging, the report supported decisions she has been making for her team. Moayedi, who was interviewed by PhoCusWright for the report, has been aggressively incorporating e-commerce tools and hopes that they will not only cement domestic business, but open up business channels in Europe, particularly London.
"We have some more growth opportunity, because as a conference center chain we hadn't been exploring e-commerce as much as hotels. We are playing catch up right now, but I think we can catch up within the year," she continued.
Aramark, along with other industry players such as Hilton Hotels, Marriott International, and Onvantage, sponsored the report, which includes information gleaned from 155 buyer surveys (94 corporate and 61 association), as well as supplier interviews and 1,100 surveys from consumers who had planned group travel for reasons such as family reunions.
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