Week after week, hybrid events are taking a little more shape within hotel groups. After Marriott, which a few days ago gave details of the roll-out of its Connect with Confidence programme in North America, but also following the announcement by Accor of the concept of hybrid meetings All Connect in partnership with Microsoft, is it's the turn of IHG Hotels & Resorts to develop its offering.
Its Meet with Confidence programme, launched last year and based on the IHG Connect which enables unlimited connectivity and management of bandwidth peaks, will be strengthened by a number of partnerships with Wellness 4 Humanity, weframe and Williams-Sonoma. The whole package a double-decker hybrid event offering with the Smart Solution, available worldwide - except in China - in hotels participating in the programme, and the Expert Solution, currently offered by around a hundred hotels in the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Asia, but not yet in France (see the list here).
In practice, the Smart Solution encompasses sanitary measures as part of the IHG Way of Clean programme, but also a rapid on-site testing option provided by Wellness 4 Humanity, plus cloud-based digital collaboration technology from weframe. Within this framework, the interactive touch screen weframe One, from 86′, enables on-site and remote participants to work collaboratively.
L'Expert Solution adds to all this additional servicesIHG's hybrid meeting solution includes a full suite of hybrid meeting capabilities, including remote participant connectivity, advanced audio-visual production and duplexing between multiple locations. More original, IHG includes in this solution a catering service for virtual participants. In partnership with Williams Sonoma, which has a catalogue of speciality foods, drinks and desserts, meals can be distributed off-site to offer all participants a shared meeting experience.
" Thanks to our enhanced technology and new partnerships, we are confident that we have put in place the right options to ensure that virtual participants can continue to experience a quality meeting from our hotels." said Derek DeCross, Senior Vice President of Global Sales at IHG Hotels & Resorts. As part of its MICE offering, the British group also very recently announced the launch of a online booking solution for meetings.
