Case Study - Hotel Hafen Hamburg and Empire Riverside

20x ROI

Online Booking

Automated Inquiries

We had an interesting discussion with Franziska Brandl from Hotel Hafen Hamburg and Empire Riverside, two family-owned hotels in Northern Germany, about the challenges they were facing, using old and antiquated booking tools to sell their meeting rooms, and how MeetingPackage's solution helped overcome these issues. Read more below.

What challenges were you facing in terms of selling Meeting rooms?

The hotel was using the classic and outdated RFP web form on its website. The range of offers, including all meeting rooms and packages, was not visible online, and every meeting room and service needed to be requested and planned individually for every customer. We were searching for a solution which should replace the website webform in a more technological way to make the booking process more accessible and more fluent for the customers and employees. Also, to look for a solution to complement their existing Booking snippet for booking bedrooms in a modern outlook.

Since you joined this project in the last stages just before going live, what was your reaction or idea about adapting this system and what challenges you felt it could overcome?

"The MeetingPackage tool complements our mission in the right way. The goal was to bring more user-friendliness to the booking system. The main challenge was to get rid of the classical web form, and MP solution helped overcome it."

Franziska Brandl Assistant Head of Convention Sales

Do you see the trends in the industry going towards using a MeetingPackage product?

The German market is definitely going forward, and the MICE industry is willing to make M&E services bookable online. The bedroom booking technology has evolved with little or no work done for Meetings booking technology. There is undoubtedly a demand for this change.

What do you consider the MeetingPackage Booking Engine solution's biggest strength and biggest weakness?

One of the biggest strengths of the Booking Engine and MeetingPackage is the team behind it. With close communication, especially with the Customer Success Team, questions and issues are always answered and solved with the best expertise. Another of the strengths is the flexibility to sell Packages to our customers. The biggest weakness is that system is, for example, Protel integration is not available yet and would make the whole service much better. Another disadvantage is that being fully booked means canceling many requests. When we choose the cancellation reason, e.g., No Availability, we cannot add messages to further explain the reason for cancellation. This option is only available when we choose Other in the list of options. This is a workaround, but it affects reading our stats at the end of the day; that's why we had to cancel an order. So even if we choose "No Availability" as the reason for cancellation, we could still be able to type a short description or explanation for our customers. The multi-day booking feature is missing, which is vital for almost 2/3rd or more of our bookers.

Let's talk now about the implementation and introduction of the solution and how you roll it out with your teams. What was your experience concerning implementing and opening the solution to both customers and Hafen Hamburg employees?

Changes bring challenges, and even though the hotel's sales team was facing some challenges concerning the question about implementation, e.g., they always felt confident of getting this project onboard in close contact with the MeetingPackage team - and are receiving many Booking Requests nowadays.
All in all, MeetingPackage software is very user-friendly, and the option to offer packages beside meeting rooms makes their work more accessible and more efficient.

How do your customers evaluate the solution in terms of sending inquiries?

In general, the solution's satisfaction, acceptance, and usage are very high because the customers can see and choose a wide range of products. Regular hotel customers have also started to use the solution for their bookings as a more straightforward solution for both sides. They are trying to teach their customers to use their Booking Engine solution. Empire Riverside Hotel has more tech-oriented bookers. Therefore, they are getting more online bookings.

The average booking value is almost 2500€ with an ROI of more than 20 times (2000%), and we hope it grows significantly once online booking is enabled.

Franziska Brandl | Assistant Head of Convention Sales

What changes or improvements would you want to see in this system moving forward?

It would be great if the conversation box could still be used after a requested date got canceled to propose other times, for example, as stated earlier. The option that the customer can see available meeting rooms in a calendar (Date Picker) when availabilities are updated would be pleasing to help the customer plan their events. Multi-day booking is undoubtedly a significant need, which can help hotels put at least a few rooms on instant availability without waiting for Protel integration. The Hotels can also make marketing efforts to highlight the Booking Engine link once the rooms are instantly bookable after the Multi-day booking feature is available.

Book a call from our specialists if you want to discuss how to automate your Meetings & Events sales processes!