Booking meetings online has always been great expectationsThis is the case for both hoteliers and event organisers. Almost a sea serpent for the sector as a whole. In order to accelerate its development, four of the major hotel groups - Accor, Hilton, IHG and Marriott - together invested 50 million dollars in the project. in the Groups360 start-up in 2019.
IHG Hotels & Resorts is now the first to reap the benefits of this partnership with the launch of the GroupSync Engage solution. Introduced at the end of last year, this is the first solution to enable customers to make instant purchases in a single transaction, online booking of both meeting spaces and/or rooms.
In the coming weeks, IHG will offer this major change in around thirty hotels in the United States. A initial deployment which will be followed by numerous other developments in the British group's North American hotels over the course of 2021.
Real-time availability of rooms, group ratesThe GroupSync Engage solution extends its capacity to cover every aspect of a typical corporate event, from the selection of food and beverage options or audiovisual requirements, to the configuration required for the meeting.
" We're always looking for ways to make life easier for meeting organisers easier and more efficient. Allowing them to instantly reserve a meeting space will eliminate the need to create a call for tenders." said Derek DeCross, Senior Vice President, Global Sales, IHG Hotels & Resorts. For his part, Kemp Gallineau, CEO of Groups360, believes that " The future of meeting booking will be direct and online, particularly for smaller, less complicated events."
