F or hotels trade fairs are like the high season in the holiday sector During major events demand clearly exceeds the supply of beds in the respective re gion Here are a few things exhibitors should do when they book if they want to be more efficient reduce stress save money and ulti mately be more successful at the fair Define preferences Three criteria have a major impact on the overnight budget and on the well being of trade fair staff the hotel standard its loca tion and the time of booking Of course giv en the same distance to the venue a two star hotel will be more favourable than a four star lodging However an uninviting hotel can have a negative effect on the motivation of trade fair personnel Vice versa a hotel with a feel good factor will lift spirits and tend to have a positive impact on talks at the booth As a compromise the exhibitor could opt for higher quality accommodation that is a bit further away with comparatively lower rates But then it should be easy to reach If there is no adequate public transport the exhibiting company needs to find its own solution Ei ther by offering a car or renting a shuttle service A single journey by minibus over a distance of around 70 kilometres costs around 140 to 250 euros a day The price varies because there is also a great demand for 8 seater minibuses during major events Book early Take the world s largest construction ma chinery fair in Munich for example The next Bauma will not be until 2019 As a hotel booking service for exhibitors our company TEST is already in the planning stages We negotiate terms with hotels and buy ade quate allotments early on With every day that the show approaches the exhibitor will be more strongly affected by a shortage of hotel rooms Hence the later he books the more he will have to pay in the end In the case of major fairs the exhibitor can remain more or less flexible by reserving allotments that can be returned up to a specific date This means he can save money but it will be difficult to accommodate any late comers Sometimes it is possible to negotiate the number of nights Often the rooms are only rented out for the entire duration of the trade fair A mixed calculation would be equally conceivable granting an exhibiting compa ny favourable rates for set up and disman tling days Stick to the contract Of course booked allotments really have to be used in the end as otherwise the hotel in question would suffer economically Because this reliability is not always given hotels of ten ask for advance payment as a precaution When cooperating with a company like TEST the exhibitor can remain flexible to a certain extent even with fixed bookings Due to our cooperation with many exhibiting companies rooms that are no longer needed can be passed on to other companies Use attendee management Transparency is essential to help exhibitors avoid expensive double bookings This happens for example if individual guests are not present for the entire duration of the fair If they fail to report that the rooms will be vacant due to poor internal coordination the additional rooms may be held unnecessarily To make things more efficient we at TEST of fer two options for attendee management Firstly we provide a service through our ded icated department that relieves exhibitors of time consuming communication with the ho tels The second option is a software based platform that customers with large room re quirements can use This platform more or less relieves those responsible for making the bookings of their entire workload Booth staff can log in themselves make change or can cel bookings There is no more need for e mail correspondence and the exhibitor has real time insight thanks to the reporting func tion This online platform is very popular with major exhibitors as it facilitates accom modation management considerably and in customer surveys almost 100 per cent rate it as excellent The Travel Event Service Team TEST consists of two independent companies in Düsseldorf and Berlin TEST has 25 years of experience in booking hotels for business travel event organisation and in the trade fair and meetings industry www hotelreservation de 35TradeFairs Internation al 6 2016 Expert Elisabeth Unger Managing Director TEST Berlin Contact EUnger testberlin de How can exhibitors profes sionalise their accommodation management Durch die Zu sammenarbeit mit einem Dienstleis ter wie TEST kön nen sich Aussteller spürbar entlasten Cooperation with a service provider like TEST lessens the workload of exhibi tors considerably Ph ot o T ES T

Vorschau TFI Trade-Fairs-International 06/2016 Seite 35
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