May 25, 2022
We are seeing a recovery in the travel and tourism industry, but the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic is still evident. Suppliers are making more changes than ever before due to the remaining uncertainty around travel planning. This poses a challenge for meetings and events professionals where time and supplies are scarce. Learn what is hindering meetings and events planners from reacting quickly to changes, and the timesaving solution to counter this.
Travel suppliers are experiencing challenges such as limited flight routes and low capacity. Planners need to be able to handle these limitations fast to secure sales. Our customers are making more updates to proposals and sending more versions as a result. So, planners must work harder to land options for a contract that meets specific customer needs.
There are also continual changes occurring in entry and travel requirements. This is resulting in increasing amendments to travel routes, rules, itineraries and so on.
Meeting and events professionals need to be prepared to source suppliers and react to changes and cancellations fast. They need to send proposals and make updates fast. Changes need to be confirmed and communicated to all necessary stakeholders. Fast.
Agencies in the MICE industry with large, complex groups rely on manual solutions, often sending proposals and contracts as pdfs. However, this is not the best way to meet these challenges. If you are dealing with several contracts and a lot of changes, there is a risk of high costs, a delay in a sale, and perhaps a loss of a sale if the planner is not equipped to act quick. You could have the most efficient team, but manual operations will still eat up time and affect quality assurance. How? Pdf documents cannot be updated, so a new version of the contract will need to be sent out each time a change is made. This makes it difficult to keep track and creates more hassle when locating the latest version if tucked away in an email inbox.
Even the most organised of meetings and events planners will want to save time in this aspect.
"Qondor saves us many hours of production and administration."
A digital platform that allows for one source of truth.
A meetings and events software like Qondor instantly converts proposals into a legally binding contract. The contract is sent to the customer once it is accepted. To accommodate for changes, the meeting planner simply needs to make the updates in one place, and changes are reflected immediately in both documents. This is more quality assuring, unlike pdf proposals, as all parties have access to one up-to-date version instead of multiple.
One place for staff to take over in a colleague’s absence.
In a platform like Qondor, your meetings and events team can easily share work between them or take over in times of an absence. Each customer enquiry is logged as a project in Qondor, so a project can be assigned to a team member(s) and viewed between the team. If a meeting planner is not available, it is easy for their colleague to take over. They can view the details of a proposal and contract to make any necessary updates right away. This could be things like amending the number of people attending an event or dinner, the number of required hotel rooms, and so on. They needn’t chase the colleague in charge, (who may be sick or enjoying a well-deserved holiday) nor keep customers waiting. Instead, they can act quickly to deliver on their customer promise.
A team can work more effectively with a shared overview.
Inform customers and attendees of changes instantly.
What if an airline has had to change a flight schedule? Or there has been an update to entry requirements to a country? Has an event been cancelled or postponed? How do you communicate this today, and how much time do you spend managing this? Our customers use Qondor to communicate with their customers or attendees by SMS or email. And - it is quick. Customers and attendees are stored in Qondor, making it easy to create a message, select those who need to be informed and send it.
To sum up, the challenge in today’s current climate is that meetings and events planners have fewer options to offer to customers due to limited suppliers. That leaves more work for planners due to an increase in changes. Despite this problem, travel management companies are still relying on manual processes, the majority using pdf proposals which are slow and ineffective.
A digital platform like Qondor gives a lot of time back. Qondor allows planners to send and update proposals and generate contracts quickly. In addition, working in one place allows a team to collaborate effectively and keep customers happy.
Meeting planners should be prepared to communicate changes fast in this landscape. Qondor removes the hassle and allows just that.
Are you facing more changes than usual in the MICE industry? Is this impacting your sales? Book a free demo below to see how we can solve it.