Shangri-La Becomes The First Hotel Group Worldwide To Offer Meeting Planners Online Event Registration Service
Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts announces that it has become the first hotel company world-wide to offer meeting and event planners the innovative services of Event411's PremierPlanner, an online registration and meeting management tool.
Utilising the California-based company's software and web-hosting service, Shangri-La's meeting services teams will be able to create customised event registration web sites for meeting planners who book events at any of its 38 Shangri-La and Traders hotels. The web sites will streamline and simplify the planning process for meeting organisers by allowing attendees to register, book rooms, review agendas and confirm participation in events online in real time. Shangri-La will begin rolling out the value-added service at its hotels from April 2002.
"Creating a web-based meeting registration site is expensive and difficult to do on an individual basis as well as time-consuming for organisers, but this is something meeting planners need and want. We have teamed up with Hong Kong based EventClicks, the Asian distributor of Event411, so that our hotels can further assist planners in creating and executing successful events," says Shangri-La's Group Director of Sales and Marketing, Carmen Lam.
PremierPlanner gives meeting planners total control of the process, with online registration, meeting management, housing, reporting and e-marketing.
The patent-pending functionality of PremierPlanner creates an online event community and encourages interactive attendee participation. Once an event web site is created, attendees can access the personalised home page to check the agenda, get the latest information and communicate with planners. In turn, meeting planners can get up-to-the minute registration numbers, pull attendee profiles and even track expenses across events.
"Shangri-La has taken the lead by embracing this technology and introducing it to its client base across the region. We are delighted to be working with such a visionary group," says Tom Murphy, Chief Executive Officer of EventClicks.
Event411 was founded in 1996 and is the longest established developer of web-based software for the meeting and event industry.
Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts is the leading Asian-based luxury hotel company in the region with nearly 20,000 rooms. Its hotels are located in the Chinese mainland, Fiji, Hong Kong SAR, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Taiwan.