Relationships Matter: A Strong Partnership With Your CVB Is The Key To Revenue Optimization
Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB) members are typically the businesses that are vested in the meetings market; they tend to be a cohesive, interconnected community focused on serving their destination’s customers. This includes hotels, transportation services, restaurants, and the like. The first-and-foremost goal of a CVB is to market their destination by providing expert assistance, education and guidance to those meeting planners.
Knowland, through its TAP solutions, aggregates, analyzes, and reports on past and future event booking data as reported by participating CVBs, to deliver actionable trending insights needed to make better strategic decisions. This data is pulled from more than 60 major North American markets and is unique in providing group room nights booking pace information across the entire multi-year future booking window. It represents over 30 million annual room nights and nearly 50% of the group business conducted by hotels across these markets. Knowland regularly shares insights from this data in its monthly Pace Navigator newsletter, to help industry stakeholders anticipate what lies ahead and better manage their business accordingly.
Knowland is now publishing a quarterly report which will provide a deeper look into and analysis of this data. The inaugural edition of Knowand’s Quarterly Market Outlook Report recaps 2018 performance and explores the current outlook for the coming months and years.
From this quarterly outlook we are seeing a theme emerge around the benefits of building strong partnerships with your local CVB. Check it out:
>>> Overall occupancy in North America grew 0.5% while group business contributed by CVBs grew 4 times faster at 2%. (Room Nights by Year Booked showed a 4.4% growth in 2018, which actualized Room Nights By Arrival Year for 2018 grew 2%.)
What does this mean? While future bookings remain healthy overall, it will be important for hotels who want to outperform their competition in base group business to foster strong ties with their CVBs to maximize their potential RevPAR.
>>> In 2019 supply growth of 2.1% is projected to outpace demand growth of 1.6% resulting in ADR growth accounting for all of RevPAR growth. We expect the gap between projected supply growth of 2% each year over the next couple of years (100,000 rooms/1000 hotels each year) and lower demand growth to widen.
Relationships Matter: A Strong Partnership With Your CVB Is The Key To Revenue Optimization
What does this mean? The winners in group meetings will be those who see CVBs as crucial business partners who can help them maintain and grow their base group business in the face of a changing competitive landscape and potential oversupply in the coming years.
It goes without saying that smart hotel sales professionals know that diversification of lead sources is a good hedge as supply begins to outpace demand in the coming years. Correctly leveraging CVBs and diversifying your inbound lead channels will create a more optimal mix for growth, and not understanding the value they bring represents a missed opportunity.
In the age of digital technology, it is easy to lose sight of the potency of a real partnership and the value of having a meaningful, relevant, data-driven interaction with your CVB partner. What is important to you as far as a mix of business, what type of RFPs do you consider most relevant to your property, and where do you believe you will be most competitive? A CVB sending unsuitable RFPs to your hotel is inefficient for both parties.
Let’s face it: “Membership bureaus are not likely to send a planner’s request for proposal (RFP) to every single member,” says Amy Long, vice president of marketing and membership for the Colorado Springs Convention and Visitors Bureau. “We definitely don’t send RFPs to every member, as that would be a waste of their time” says Long. The philosophy? Quality trumps quantity every time.
Our CVB data opens the door to some serious questions you should be asking yourself and your CVB partner. Are you leveraging your CVB to drive your revenue goals? Are you on a first-name basis with the key staff at your CVB? Do they understand your business model? Are you always in their consideration set when you ought to be? Are you winning your fair share (or better) of business that passes through your CVB?
Register for our complimentary webcast on May 1, 2019 at 1:00p ET to learn more about the trends we are seeing in the Quarterly Market Outlook Report.
