The Modern Hotelier #117: Streamlining Sales & Management for Hotel Group Bookings, Meetings & Events | with Joonas Ahola
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Steve Carran: We are joined by Joonas Ahola from Meeting Package today. Jonas, how are you doing today?
How is the hospitality show going on the first day? 
Joonas Ahola: Great to be here. Early to stay still. Uh, what's gonna be the hit rate and the success out of the show, but So far so good. Great to be
here. 
David Millili: So let us know, how did you get involved in hospitality? 
Joonas Ahola: Oh my, you want the short or the long one? 
David Millili: You can give us the medium. 
Joonas Ahola: Uh, I started my second company at the age of 16, which was an event agency. So that kind of was the first touch to hospitality, I should say, as a business or a sector. Uh, I ran that for roughly eight years. Uh, it was kind of catering and we had four or five properties ourselves, which we hosted events in.
And I got fed up with the RFPs and inquiries, which eventually led up to where Meeting Package is today. But where I got into it was purely through the frustration and the kind of dealing with events of all kinds, corporate events, social events, weddings, etc. And that's my touch points to the hospitality. 
Steve Carran: That's awesome. So for those that might not be familiar, can you tell us a little bit more about Meeting Package? 
Joonas Ahola: Yeah, so Meeting Package is the CRS for groups, meetings, and events sales. And for the people who are not from the industry and don't necessarily know what CRS means, we define it as the all in one sales platform for groups, meetings, and events, which technically means direct, indirect, offline, or online sales. 
David Millili: good. So give us some more insight to that. So the CRS for meetings and events and for groups. So give us a little bit more like how that, how that works. 
Joonas Ahola: Yeah, so first of all, if we look at the industry in general, groups, meetings, and events, the inventory is not out in the market. So it's completely offline, fragmented.
The systems are in place, but technically it's not to the end customer having the visibility of availability or rates. So what we do as the layer in between, whether you call it now CRS or what we call it the venue sales management platform, that's the one that integrates and pulls the availability rates from the operational tools, whether it's the property management software, whether it's the sales and catering solution, and formalizes that data points in one, uh, aggregated environment, which allows the hotels to then control the business rules.
How they sell, where they sell, what price they sell, and also it allows the transactions, whether they're instant, as definite, or inquiries, to go back to the operational tools of the hotels. 
Steve Carran: That's awesome. So Meeting Package claims to help all sales channels. Can you elaborate on that a little bit? 
Joonas Ahola: Yeah, I think
a little bit touched it
already in the earlier comment, but what we mean is the fact that today,
whatever
hotels sell, uh, by default,
majority of the
sales is offline. Like, even though it would come
from their own
website.
it's still actually
offline because it goes through an email, a salesperson takes it and
starts typing it into their
PMS. But if
we look at it from
uh, to
down in a sense that you have a national sales office or a global sales office,
they
attend trade fairs like this one,
they
receive leads.
So we have a tool called Global lead Passing Tool where the person, the national sales office person or the GSO person can put the lead
in and then transform that lead into the property scale. That's one
product
and that transforms the offline direct into the property side 
automatically.
Then we have
what
we call the light sales and Gathering for properties that don't have an operational tool in the
hotel. Of course, if you're a hotel that has already, let's say, Opera,
they would put it there, but
for the hotels that don't
have any
solution in place Today, run on a spreadsheet, manual calendar
diary, we offer the property that
solution that they can actually put that booking into the system at the property level
When the whole customer is coming to the site.
and saying, Hey, we want to have a space or we want 20 rooms or whatever it is. Then
the next one is direct
online. so the brand. com
solutions. Again, 
we're talking
about online
transactions, not purely RFPs. Like, if
you go to a hotel website and
see a web form, that is offline. It goes through an email. We're talking about the fact of having
a brand. com solution, a booking engine that caters groups, meetings, and events,
and directly swims to the
operational tool of the hotel. And then the last
piece is INDIRECT online, channels. meaning the C Vents of the world, the marketplaces, of the world, and so forth. So our channel manager controls
that
distribution strategy for the hotel, so they can have one central strategy,
how they distribute,
in which channels, what are the prices, and again,
whether it's inquiry, instant booking, request 
to book, 
it funnels
directly to the operational tool. So in the hotels perspective, direct, indirect, online, on offline, they go through the CRS piece or the venue sales management piece and flows back to their PMS or sales and catering. And it doesn't matter which sales and catering or PMS it is, we can then integrate directly. So you might have a chain that uses 
opera And muse, 
but
you still need to have one
simple
customer fa interface for the
end customer and you cannot have a difference 
between
what BMS or S& C
they're 
using. 
David Millili: hoteliers are facing problems when it comes to groups, meeting in event space, and maybe just, you know, highlight some, what are some of those just in general problems that they're having? 
Joonas Ahola: I normally put it into two baskets.
Number one is data accuracy and data understanding. Uh, what that means is the fact that if you ask a hotel, even in short, how many bookings did you do last quarter on meetings and events and groups? 95 percent of the time they don't have it on top of their head, which means that it's not being followed.
It's not being as important as it should be. And other contexts would be like e commerce conversion or look to book ratio and so forth. They just don't actually know that figure. So that's, I think, number one issue that they don't even realize themselves is that we don't know. Because in hotel groups meeting as an event sector, a siloed.
Like there's not a helicopter view of the data that understands it. From the source of the transaction until the event is held, what happens in between? What are the touch points? What is the conversion angle and so forth? And the second, I think, problem or the issue that the hotels are facing is the demand is picking up, but the tools are not which means the fact that you have less operational people in the hotels compared to pre pandemic, I know nobody wants to compare anymore to that one, but you have less staff.
Demand is high, but you don't have any more automation than you used to. And I think that's the one number one problem that they're facing today. That how can, how can they do that leap of faith and that jump from offline or how they're working today to more automized fashion. 
David Millili: Yeah, makes sense. 
Steve Carran: So kind of on that topic, what is the most common topic of relief? You resolve the issues with your customers. 
Joonas Ahola: I think reverse engineering, my earlier, uh, answer. Number one, understanding the data. So you can actually make decisions based on data and gut feelings. We all know we've been working in this industry for quite some time. A lot of the, let's say, uh, arguments from hotels is based on gut feelings. That's just the reality.
It's not based on that last quarter. Our conversion was 7. 5 percent and it hit there because of X, Y, Z factors. It's based on feelings. It's based on emotions. It's based on feedback coming from salespeople rather than pure data. Now, when they get that data, they can actually make decisions based on data.
And second thing is when they go online, a lot of hotels, when they go online, they get the noise away from their salespeople, which means the small meetings, the small events, the small groups, which is the vast maturity on volume wise, not on revenue, but volume wise, that they can get that noise away and that pain away from the operational people of the hotels. 
David Millili: So when you look at different markets What are the different problems that the markets have? So, you know, versus maybe North America versus 
Joonas Ahola: Good question. I think, uh, first finding, uh, for the people who don't know, so we are European based, based in Finland, uh, we've been operating 
in 
Europe for eight years soon.
Oh my. but the fundaments of Europe, I think Europe is, A couple of years, three, four years ahead of the U.S when it comes to automation and digitalization of groups, meetings, and events. And also understanding what total revenue management actually means. It's not about maximizing your group rates. It's about maximizing your ancillary services, your other elements in the hotel.
And when we come to U.S I think the first comment is always, no, no, no, I don't want to talk about my meeting rooms or my spaces or my food and beverage. How can I maximize my group revenue? I'm like, But you have 20 meeting rooms that aren't sold. Can we look at them? And I think that's like a fundamental mindset change that needs to happen.
There are some great examples in the US that are looking at optimizing thee revenue based on the spaces and the square meters that I have in my property rather than just filling that bedroom fully. So that's number one. Europe is like focused purely on maximizing the opportunities They can sell meetings without groups and groups without meetings and kind of looking at how can we just get our house full.
as far as US is like group heavy and I can give my meeting rooms for free if you just book 30 bedrooms. Like the mindset is different. then if you look at, uh, not only geographical differences, it's more like, full scale hotels or full service hotels, limited service hotels. The underlying or the overlying, uh, main issue is always the same, like whether the data, uh, or the tools are in place and the technology allows you to go online or you don't have any technology, but the overlying reason is still the same.
The technology is not out to the market, not to the end customer, whether there is technology or not. That's the difference. Like full service hotels, they already have their sales and caterings, their BMSs, but it's not connected to the broader masses. Limited service hotels, they just don't have technology to cater to groups, meetings and events.
And therefore it's not available 
to the broader masses. But 
as you can see, the fundament is still the same across the board. 
Steve Carran: So how do you see the market evolving over the next couple of years?
Joonas Ahola: I think, if I'm going to be realistic, I think in 
the next couple of years, 
moving, but not as fast as we want.
Uh, of course, what we look at meetings and events in group 
area, I think. 
The reality is that it's getting 
more and more focus and, 
uh, let's say compared to five, six years
ago, meetings and events and groups was always like the second child. 
Uh, I don't know if that's even 
a definition 
or
saying 
in English, but, uh, the reality is that groups always got the first focus in a hotel or bedrooms transient, not 
not even 
That 20-30 of the revenue which is driven by groups, meetings, and events, it's more being always the kind of second topic.
If I need to prioritize, I'm not going to do that. Now a lot of hotels are actually prioritizing that and kind of looking at technology to embrace the automation angle. And a lot of vendors are looking at it from different angles, whether it's online booking or whether it's driven more about operational automation.
But still, as long as you're touch basing that, I see that as a big win 
already 
to the industry. And eventually everyone will land into the same, whether it's now two years, four years, six years, remains to 
be 
seen. But I'm, optimistic that we're going to see a lot of change in the next couple of years, within specifically 
this sector. 
David Millili: That's great. And so here we are, 2024 is almost over.
What's next for Meeting Package? What do you guys have? What, any new products, any new announcements? What's next for you guys? 
Joonas Ahola: I hope. Like a huge expansion when it comes to a number of properties and so on. We want to, our target is to hit 50,000 by 2027. so we have a lot of work to do and a lot of, elements still to be fixed during that path.
But I think if you look at it technology wise, we're launching our new set of APIs for multi-day multi-room groups in conjunction, which means the fact that you have one API stack that you can actually make now Group bookings, meeting room bookings, multi-day multi-room F&B all in one unified API transaction.
Uh, that will be released in Q1, let's say January, uh, is our go date, but you want to be on the safe side. that also means that we're relaunching our next generation booking engine to our customers. So, what they can embed in their own website, that's the white label. The main thing when we do booking engines, for example, to our customers, the end customers don't know our existence.
Because we're not a marketplace, because we're not a vendor that is catered towards the end customer in a sense that we would need to be shown. A lot of vendors who use us, you don't even know actually that they use us. then, we all know the fancy world of AI, to some extent we are already using AI, but we're enhancing it more, not to the extent that people would think, we're being a little bit more on the conservative side of using AI.
We have so much data already in our application when it comes to kind of historical data, ways of working and so on, and you cannot create a dashboard for every use case. That's just a reality. So the main thing that we want to launch on the AI side is the fact that you can look at historical data, you can understand whatever you want to give a report to your peer in the hotel, you just type it in and ask for it and it gives you that raw data or that graph automatically based on the data that you have.
Or you might have a booking on record saying, Hey, has this customer booked in the last two years? And what have I offered to them? So it gives that data which you normally would have needed to filter or search for and so forth. and mainly I would say, as we are integration heavy and looking at us as the agnostic player, like we want to call ourselves agnostic.
We don't want to compete with anyone. We look at ourselves in the middle. Yes, we have products that compete with some of our partners and so forth. But the agnostic means for us is that even for the broader non industry vendors, we use, I don't know if anyone, uh, in the audience knows, but we use the analogy of, uh, being a hotspot.
Like, we might not be the CRM, best CRM solution. We might not be the best marketing automation or the best content management software, but we have a kind of all in one. And that's how we kind of also tend to look at it in a sense uh, if someone finds a better, I don't know, booking engines, great. Use our APIs to build that.
If you find a better e proposal, great. Let's connect that also. Like, even though we have those solutions, it doesn't mean that we cannot work together. And, therefore, our big focus for next year is, and we're hiring also for these roles like Director of Partnerships and so forth, to look at the partnership ecosystem and really grow it and exponentially kind of create a flywheel impact eventually to get more hotels on 
David Millili: That's 
Steve Carran: Awesome. So Jonas, how can people find you? How can people find more about Meeting Package? Tell people how we can get a hold of you.
Joonas Ahola: I think in this era where we live already, it's like, hey, go online, you should find it, but, uh, of course, midibaggage. com, uh, you can find a lot of the relevant information, case studies, uh, ROI calculators, like, should I do this?
There's a calculator online to help you, let's say, analyze the data, and hopefully you have at least the data that we need to bring that ROI into place, but eventually, that's a good starting point. Uh, you can always reach out to me personally in LinkedIn or, uh, Send me a message in any forum you find me, or even in the trade floor level, just come say hi. 
Steve Carran: Awesome. Well this has been great to chat. Thanks so much. Another episode of The Modern Hotelier coming from The Hospitality Show.