Soon after COVID-19 began to spread in the United States, a client told Mike Ferreira, owner and founder of Meetings Made Easy, that its fall conference would be delayed. The trouble was the hotel the technological company originally booked was not available at the new desired date.
Knowing this was hardly a unique circumstance, Ferreira knew he needed to act fast. He recalls first learning of the news on a Friday. By the following Monday, he and his clients were on a Zoom call with Hilton Orlando Bonnet Creek for a virtual site visit.
“We knew we needed to act fast, but you need to have a site visit,” says Ferreira, who had already held events at the property but needed the tech company, planning a 2,500-person event, to feel it was the right choice.
The Hilton staff filmed a virtual tour and uploaded it to Zoom. The rest is history—and a case study of the future of site visits.
“Right now, video is just as good as gold—it is the end-all and be-all for marketing,” Ferreira says.
Pre-filming site visits is a key recommendation Ferreira has for hotels, “Walking around on a laptop is not ideal—it would be shaky.”
Above all else, he says, hotels need to move beyond traditional PowerPoints, lest they look behind the times. If staff is unable to get into the hotels, as is the case in Ferreira’s home town of Las Vegas, he suggests repurposing preexisting footage. “Anything you have, definitely present it,” says Ferreira, who previously worked in sales at Bellagio Las Vegas. “It’s so hard to judge a hotel on renderings that are made to look amazing.”
The good news for planners is many hotels are taking that advice to heart.
The Hotel at the University of Maryland, a luxury hotel and conference center in College Park, Maryland, and its managing company Southern Management Corporation, have partnered with Realync, a platform that allows for live interactive video tours of the property.
“Our goal is to provide clients with the opportunity to begin planning now, even if they are unable to be on-site,” says Jeff Brainard, vice president of sales and marketing at Southern Management Corporation. “We must be ready to respond to the needs of the market as soon as it recovers, and in the meantime, interactive video technology can help us overcome some of the challenges that have surfaced as a result of the pandemic.”
Similarly, the Resort at Paws Up, a luxury property spread across 37,000 acres in Montana, recently debuted a virtual tool, says National Sales Manager Samantha Lange. She adds it will only enhance the team’s efforts in bringing in business. “Our sales team is very familiar with selling our property to groups or planners who never visit the property, so this is not something new or unusual to us,” Lange notes.
Naples Grande Beach Resort in Florida launched a full hotel tour powered by Visiting Media in fall 2019, allowing the property to start working with planners immediately. The offering, which can be seen here, includes three-dimensional models to jump to highlights of the hotel.
“Prospective clients find it incredibly useful and effective. They can now refer to the link, rather than having their phones filled with resort pictures they took during site tours,” says Melinda Hutchins, director of sales and marketing for Naples Grande Beach Resort. “The tool provides them the ability to virtually make decisions.”
AT&T Hotel and Conference Center in Austin, offers virtual tours of its meeting space complete with stills and floor plans on its website. "As clients plan their meetings, our virtual tours have been a big help for those who can't tour our property in person,” says Alison Berg, the property’s director of sales and marketing. “Our team is able to walk clients through our meeting rooms and help them envision their event as if they were in our conference center."
Marigot Bay Resort & Marina in St. Lucia and Park Hyatt St. Kitts, pictured above, are among the Caribbean properties going virtual. Both hope the allure of the beaches and amenities each present will reignite the incentive market once travel resumes in earnest.
Marigot Bay Resort & Marina has a 3D tour available on its website, while the Park Hyatt presents tours of the dining areas and the region’s first Miraval Life in Balance Spa.
Sarah Buchbinder, meeting group broker at Meetings Made Easy, applauds these efforts, as well as collaborative approaches she has seen. “I’m seeing a lot of hotels work with their DNC partners,” she says. “They are not just focusing on hotels and space, but the whole experience. That keeps everyone excited.”
