Casa Collina

Tip 7: Selling Your Event Space

Steven Rawson — Mon, 21 Mar 2022 19:31:14 +0000

There is the dream of everyone that owns or runs a meeting and events venue. It is a dream to look at your events diary and all of your spaces are booked morning, noon and night.

Not only is it booked but your revenue numbers are far beyond expectations. Moreover your operations team is ready and willing to ensure a seamless turnaround from one piece of business to the next. There’s nothing wrong with always keeping that world in mind and striving to achieve it. Just as airlines analysed the pit crews of formula one cars so that they could make their flight turnaround times as efficient as possible, we will share with you some ideas to help you get closer to your own utopia.

Whether you’re a large conference venue in the heart of London or a country manor with several small meeting rooms, there are some foundations that you will need before going out and getting clients to fill your space.

Firstly, know your competitor set and what they offer. You would be surprised how many conversations we have with prospective clients at Casa who believe their MICE comp set is only those venues within a small mile radius. In contrast to your corporate transient competitive set, your MICE comp set covers a much wider geographical area.

If you’re a country house in Buckinghamshire receiving an enquiry, the client’s search would more than likely cover all country houses in the whole of the Home Counties area, not just Bucks.

A venue in central London has competition throughout the whole city. However it could also include similar sized venues in Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Edinburgh and Glasgow. If you’re a large congress property, you may be competing against a venue in Paris or Barcelona. Ask your clients who you are up against when they ask to hold space. Build a picture of your competitors, particularly get to know their limitations.

Next up, make sure you have a demand calendar. Most people already work with some type of system that tries to maximise the peak dates. Ensure though that all of your team know why a booking may not be a good booking if it blocks out other bookings. We use a traffic light system so our teams know when they can be flexible and when they need to stick to their optimum numbers. Do the same with your pricing. As simple as it sounds, make sure everyone knows the dates and days of the week when you can discount and the dates you shouldn’t. You will know your space better than we do but if in doubt just look at historic data.

Have a clear pricing structure and make sure everyone in your team knows how they are worked out. You wouldn’t necessarily expect everyone to be able to price up a bespoke eight course tasting menu with pairing wines but certainly the DDR breakdown, minimum spend requirements for exclusive hire and the cost of specialised AV needs to be known by everyone selling.

Really know the space. It sounds a little too obvious to be stated here but we often find that the sellers and the operators can be

far apart on what the other thinks is do-able in any given space. Get your sales and reservations people to really know the lay- outs, limitations, best set-up, service considerations, distance from the kitchen etc before they start converting.

We wouldn’t recommend you be too precious on the type of business you want either. Especially post-Covid. Usual caveats about goodwill and reputation not withstanding. We hear time and again venue clients saying ‘We don’t really want that type of business’. Whether it’s funny handshake male only dinners, unusually themed weddings or ‘educational’ investment seminars.

Don’t let a long forgotten bad operational experience put you off particular types of business. Don’t think that your clients shouldn’t book through an agent and don’t believe all brides should ditch their wedding planners. Quote all business on its own merits including all cost of sale.

It goes without saying that you should always mitigate any risk to the business by making sure all indemnities and paperwork is clearly explained, signed and filed. Have standard terms and conditions ready to go and make sure everyone understands what these terms mean. Don’t sign off anything you’re not comfortable with on the premise that no-one really relies on them anyway. Consider also that if someone really insists that you sign off on their contract terms without amendment, this may undermine their validity. The law doesn’t like coercion.

In the coming weeks we will talk a little more about how to better sell and market your venue but let’s presume in the meantime that you’re already getting enquiries coming in. How best should we manage these? Firstly, make sure that everyone sells. It’s not just because we’re sales people that we value selling but we really believe that everyone should be selling. This doesn’t mean that your venue should turn into a hustling bazaar, rather that everyone should be aware of the commercial goals of the business. More importantly they should be encouraged to help achieve them.

Try to be imaginative and flexible with your space. Look at what can be done with your space rather than what can’t. A reception area can be turned into additional breakout space, a bedroom into a syndicate. Always keep in mind that if operationally it can be delivered, that means it is possible. It might be an added bit of work to transform the space, but it is chargeable. Not only this, it may well free up other spaces that can be sold to other clients, increasing revenue levels further.

Empower your reservations staff to engage with the client. Give them the support and assistance to build commercial relationships with the clients calling/emailing with enquiries. Get them to meet agents, wedding couples and corporate clients. The relationship your reservations team has with the client is just as important as the one your sales team has. Make sure that you encourage it.

Just because a reactive role typically waits for the phone to ring, it doesn’t mean they can’t pick up the phone and be proactive to secure a piece of business. Get everyone in the habit of asking the client ‘how do we get this business?’.

Manage your provisional bookings better. Time and again we see that a piece of business has been automatically released as the confirmation deadline has passed. Often no-one has informed the client or even bothered chasing it. Always go back to the client and ask if they want to confirm the booking or if they want to keep holding the space. Better still, ask them what you need to do to get them to confirm it. In the first instance, when holding the space, ask the client when they think they’ll be in a position to confirm the booking. Try to avoid pre-set dates and work with the client on their timelines. Be honest with them and tell them why you can or can’t keep a hold on space.

Let them know that if another credible enquiry comes in willing to confirm the same space, you may have to ask them for a decision.

Try to avoid offering 2nd options. Whilst we can all point to examples where they have confirmed, our experience tells us that clients really don’t like them. Clients will actively seek space that they know is theirs and theirs alone until they are in a position to confirm. It also adds another unnecessary layer of confusion to your diary management.

Better to ask two simple questions. 1) Inform the 2nd enquirer that you already have a booking in the space and ask them that if you freed up this space, would they confirm? And 2) Inform the first enquirer that you have a credible enquiry and ask them what you need to do to get them to confirm? This is where your reactive team become sales people. Trust us, these simple tweaks will increase your conversions and build better relationships with your clients. Your sales will increase as a result.

The post Tip 7: Selling Your Event Space appeared first on Casa Collina.

Tip 7: Selling Your Event Space

Steven Rawson — Mon, 21 Mar 2022 19:22:30 +0000

There is the dream of everyone that owns or runs a meeting and events venue. It is a dream to look at your events diary and all of your spaces are booked morning, noon and night.

If you’re a country house in Buckinghamshire receiving an enquiry, the client’s search would more than likely cover all country houses in the whole of the Home Counties area, not just Bucks.

Really know the space. It sounds a little too obvious to be stated here but we often find that the sellers and the operators can be

Let them know that if another credible enquiry comes in willing to confirm the same space, you may have to ask them for a decision.

The post Tip 7: Selling Your Event Space appeared first on Casa Collina.

Tip 6: A Decent Rate Structure

Steven Rawson — Tue, 19 Oct 2021 07:26:40 +0000

Your price is the value of your commodity. Like many commodities, it may fluctuate based on supply and demand. There are many tools to better estimate this which we’ll cover in more detail later in the series. In the meantime though you still need to have some semblance of structure to your pricing so that you can sell enough of it through the right channels.

Each rate plan or pricing structure does depend on your particular property, its market positioning and also your own personal view. There are plenty of ideas on this so just ask around.

The Casa position though is formed by our simplistic view concerning demand. That is, the more demand you have, the higher your rates. So to get more demand you need to have more clients. More clients means you need more rates.

Having a single rate plan can mean that you restrict the amount of clients because some channels only work with certain pricing structures. If your price is only publicly available then your audience will only come through public channels. If you don’t offer corporate rates then you won’t gain much corporate business. Leisure contracts need leisure rates.

Why should a high volume buyer of hotel accommodation pay the same as someone who may never use you again? It’s the same with packaged tour rates. If you don’t have nett rates available then the agent won’t make a margin. No margin means they won’t make money from selling you. If you’re the only hotel left in the destination then you may pick-up bits and pieces on a public rate but not much more.

Simply put, having a rate structure that speaks to a wider audience through a bigger distribution network and multiple potential client types equals more demand.

‘Ah’ we hear time and time again, ‘our prices are reduced because of the market conditions and we can’t reduce them anymore’. Or we hear ‘with commissions and cost of sale being applied it’s too cheap already’.

Look at what you want to achieve in terms of nett ADR and try to segment your pricing based on this. Naturally if you want to achieve £200 then for every room you sell at £180 you must also sell one at £220.

That’s not to say that there aren’t businesses that sell only at £200 for every room where the price really is the price. We have worked with properties that regularly achieve this.

However, these properties tend to spend a huge amount of money on reputational marketing and PR. That’s their strategy and it works for them.

For the rest of us, to achieve your ideal ADR wherever possible you should try and work your pricing upwards, not downwards. This is based on adding the cost of sale to a base price rather than having a price and ending up with much less after all cost of sales are taken off.

In practical terms this means looking at all of the available channels, their products and all of the costs that you incur both in terms of discounts and commission. Start with a price that you want to achieve then look at where it is likely to come from. Your lowest rate should calculated by excluding commission, minus potential fees or reductions. Once this is done, you will know what your selling price is because you will be building up to it.

Knowing this means that you will not need to turn down opportunities that can help with any low periods. You simply turn on or turn off based on your pick-up and pace.

Selling half of your rooms at £200 is the same income-wise as all of them at £100. However with a higher occupancy you have more clients to sell dinners and drinks to. Usually the reason for not selling cheap is because we don’t want to undermine our price integrity. We’ve all heard the same thing but what exactly does it mean? If you can sell half of your rooms at £200 then there is a demand for that price so why not sell all of them at £200?

If we could we would! but this is where a multi-layered rate structure can make the difference. Why not sell half at £100 and half at £200 so you achieve the best of both worlds.

Know which channel is going to produce bookings at the highest price and which need more flexible pricing. Know who the end user is. Sell your products through sources that compliment each other and not those that have overlapping client bases.

A bedroom, meeting room, seat in the restaurant or space on the massage table is a perishable commodity. If you don’t sell it, it goes to waste, no different than a piece of fruit in the supermarket.

To help you tweak your pricing, there is whole host of data available from many sources professing to give you market insights.

Understand that when you look at market data, really you’re looking at what everyone is/should be achieving all things being equal. That means to beat the market you need to look at doing more than your peer group and taking business that is in addition to your fair share. Think in terms of trying to control some of your demand rather than relying on the destination to provide all of it.

Ad hoc groups, walk-ins, corporate agreements, targeted flash sales are some of the ways you can add to the general demand you receive because of your destination. Understand that the wedding party is only coming to you. That corporate group that decided to stay with you, is yours alone to accommodate.

But each of these sectors need differing rates. Your sales team need something to go to market with, flash sales are obliged to sell at a discount. These prices should be planned in advance and structured into your rate plan.

Use opaque channels properly and sell these rooms either packaged up so the price is unknown to the end user or sold to a closed user group. So your £100 tariff is not publicly available. Leave your £200 for your public channels. That way your public offering remains relatively consistent. Price integrity assured.

Nowadays you have so many ways to sell your rooms. Focus on opening and closing your opaque channels to slow down your pick-up whilst simultaneously raising your prices or restricting room types.

Of course despite what we say about opening a wide distribution and controlling your demand, you still need to keep one eye on your competitive set. However if you can sell products they can’t through channels they don’t work with then it’s you everyone will be looking at with envy, not the other way round.

If you want us to put together a structure for you, just let us know. Before Casa start working with clients we always evaluate how they sell, to whom and at what price. Often simple tweaks to the rate structure can make a big difference to sales. Plus it reduces the risk of having parity issues.

The post Tip 6: A Decent Rate Structure appeared first on Casa Collina.

Tip 6: A Decent Rate Structure

Steven Rawson — Tue, 19 Oct 2021 07:25:20 +0000