The MICE market, short for meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions, is growing at a rapid pace, with an ever-increasing number of corporates looking to hotel venues for meeting room bookings. It’s no surprise then that the industry is projected to reach US$1.4 billion by 2025.
But despite the growth in the market, corporates and event planning personnel have no easy job when it comes to finding the right venue for their event. Dealing with different group sizes, transport logistics and conference room tech requests, while simultaneously working towards a strict budget, is trickier than you might think.
If you’re new to the industry or have been tasked with finding the right venue, there are a few tips and tricks you can follow to make your job easier in the long run.
1. Determine the type of event
Before planning any bookings, it’s important to determine the exact type of event you have been tasked with organising, as each comes with its own different requirements:
Meeting: a meeting event includes two or more people coming together in a specific place for a particular activity, either as a one-off or as a regular occurrence. While this is usually work-related, it can also include company outings or team-building events. In most cases, it requires booking at least one meeting space, as well as accommodation and transport for attendees if they are travelling from out of town.
Conference: similar to a meeting in the sense that a group of people are coming together in one place, conferences usually include specific business objectives. For a corporate travel planner, this often means organising itineraries and meetings for employees in addition to overnight accommodation and transport.
Incentive: a little different to the previous two, incentive travel is typically not specifically related to business travel per-se. It’s usually given to an employee as a reward for hard work and to encourage motivation. For these trips, event planners are usually tasked with finding adequate transport and accommodation options for the travelling party.
Exhibition: exhibitions are usually where businesses display their latest products or services and send employees to meet with other industry professionals. Besides transport and accommodation costs, travel planners may be required to organise exhibition stands or meeting rooms.
2. Choose the ideal location
The next step is to choose a location that suits all group members involved in the trip. If the aim is to attend a specific exhibition or conference, you’ll need to make sure all attendees can easily travel to the city it is being hosted in.
If you’re organising an internal meeting that brings together remote working teams, choosing a location might become a little trickier. A city-centre might be more accessible than a smaller town, but it also has a vast number of options to choose from when it comes to finding a meeting venue and hotel within budget.
3. Negotiate a competitive pricing
Once the type of travel and location have been decided, the real hard work begins: finding the best hotel and resort venues at a competitive rate. Searching for suitable options, contacting relevant venues and requesting rates and pricing for each is a time-consuming job for an already busy events team.
The easiest way to find the best option for your event is to work with experienced event consultants specialising in this sort of work. Not only will they have local knowledge of your desired locations, but they’ll likely also have built up close relationships with staff at hotels to negotiate discounted rates, saving you both time and money.
At HotelREZ, we offer a dedicated MICE Desk to provide solutions for all your venue finding needs. With our free venue finding service, we guarantee that there is no cost involved in making an enquiry. Simply call or send us an email and we will respond as soon as possible.
From city centre hotels to sleek boutique beach resorts and country-house retreats, our portfolio includes over 600 hotels and resorts across 35 countries.
Let experienced event consultants do the job for you
The HotelREZ MICE team understands what it takes to create the perfect meeting, so to ensure everything runs smoothly, don’t be afraid to reach out.
From modern city centre meeting spaces to country house style venues, the HotelREZ collection includes different styles of rooms to fit any occasion. To give you an example, through our partnership with Exclusive Hotels and Venues, we can cater for:
- Meetings and conferences of any size
- Active and social team building events
- Incentive events and getaways
- Training events for learning & development programmes
- Private dining for special occasions
- Exclusive use of venues and properties
- Corporate golf days
- Corporate spa days
Our international portfolio is additionally made up of Vale Resort Cardiff and Coombe Abbey Coventry in the UK, Dorint Hotels in Germany, AX Hotels in Malta and many more.
Whether you’re working for a corporate, agency or another type of event planner, simply give us a brief and we’ll do the work on your behalf. There is no cost involved in making an enquiry, all that we ask is that if you select one of our proposed options, you confirm your desired venue back through us.
Have a meeting and events request? Get in touch and you’ll hear from us shortly!
About HotelREZ
HotelREZ Hotels & Resorts was founded in 2004 by Mark Lewis, an experienced hospitality industry professional and entrepreneur. Over the course of over a decade, the company has grown to be one of the leading hotel representation companies dedicated to marketing and connecting independent properties with bookers worldwide. HotelREZ now provides distribution, revenue, sales consultancy and marketing services and support to more than 1,500 hotels, apartments and hotel groups in over 100 countries including private label GDS chain code solutions. HotelREZ Hotels & Resorts is a SAAS company.
HotelREZ manages the brand Best Loved Hotels, a collection of unique global individual properties, with a dedicated GDS Programme, together with a Website and printed Directory, aimed at the high-end leisure agency and traveller. HotelREZ also incorporates the global World Rainbow Hotels, the world’s only GDS enabled LGBT global hotel consortia representing some 1200 hotels in 230 destinations across the globe.