Source: Meetings Maker

Meetings Maker is a new direct booking system designed specifically for meeting rooms within hotels. It was launched in the UK and US this month by London-based technology innovator YWS and has already been rolled out across Premier Inn’s UK hotels. The system can be easily added to any existing hotel’s website, allowing hotel groups to make their meeting rooms searchable, bookable and payable, in real-time, on their own website.

The whole booking process takes less than five minutes. Using Meetings Maker, customers are able to enter their meeting requirements – location, number of attendees, room layout, and duration directly on the hotel’s website. The system then provides a view of the hotel group’s locations that have meeting rooms matching their requirements. This feature is particularly useful if the group has a cluster of hotels within one city. Customers can click through to specific rooms, add catering and equipment and then book and pay by card online (or on account if authorised) with just a few clicks.

By immediately providing all the information a customer needs to make a purchasing decision, Meetings Maker offers hotel groups the prospect of increased revenue and reduced costs as well as an enhanced customer experience.

Meetings Maker has already been implemented by the UK’s largest hotel group, Premier Inn. “Moving our meeting rooms to direct online bookings has brought us enormous benefits,” commented Keith Hudspith, head of Food and Beverages at Premier Inn. “Our customers are happy because they can book a meeting space in an instant, order catering and even make changes to their bookings quickly and easily at any hour of the day. We are happy because our team members are freed up to focus their time and effort on larger revenue opportunities.”

Matthew Stubbs Chief Executive of YWS said, “The system is currently being considered by a number of hotel groups that are keen to boost their directly booked meeting room revenue as well as reduce the labour costs incurred handling high volumes of enquiries and RFPs.”

Stubbs continued, “Over the past few years most hotel groups have seen an increasing proportion of their bedroom bookings coming from third party online booking providers. Meetings Maker allows hotel groups to get ahead of the curve with meeting rooms and offer an outstanding online booking service of their own. By adopting this approach early it will enable them to secure online meeting booking business as a direct revenue stream. Having a direct booking relationship with the customer is important because it invariable drives a higher margin and a greater measure of control.”

Meetings Maker comes with a full suite of tools including inventory control and yield management. It also includes a powerful business intelligence module providing a wide range of reports, including actual vs. budgeted revenue and variance, occupancy percentage, business on the books and meeting room vs. F&B income. Reports can be generated for any time period and show groups, regions or individual properties. An optional bedroom booking interface also allows customers to book associated room nights at the same time.

Meetings Maker is a fully hosted system delivered as software as a service. There is no upfront investment required and the fixed monthly payment is easy to budget. It includes software licences, web hosting, maintenance and system training. Meetings Maker can be used alongside leading Property Management Systems or integrated with them.

YWS can also provide hotels groups with a PCI compliant contact centre to handle customer booking, payments and support by phone, email and live chat 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

About Meetings Maker and YWS

YWS is a UK headquartered technology business with offices in London, San Diego and Singapore. It produces fully hosted, real time meeting room booking and management software for hotel groups and other venues. The company also operates a 24/7, UK based, multi-channel customer contact centre.

Drew Post
+44 (0)20 3668 5014