According to a recent ICRA report, the Indian hotel industry is expected to witness a revenue growth of 7-9 per cent in the 2024-25 financial year. Among the key revenue drivers are leisure, MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, and Exhibitions), and wedding segments. This article explores how hotels in India can leverage global technology trends to tap into the growing MICE market and enhance their business prospects.
India’s growing emphasis on trade and business has led to a surge in demand for conferences, seminars, and exhibitions, significantly contributing to the MICE sector’s expansion. An event of notable significance was the G20 summit held in India, which served as a platform for numerous world leaders, policymakers, and business executives to convene, collaborate, and establish connections.
Hotels play a crucial role in facilitating MICE events of various scales, offering a comprehensive range of services and amenities necessary for such occasions. These include meeting and conference spaces, accommodations, food and beverage services, audio-visual facilities, and technical support, all conveniently available in one location.
MICE tourism offers several advantages for hotels, event planners and other stakeholders. Unlike leisure travel, MICE business is more predictable and secure, as it is planned well in advance with fewer cancellations. This enables hotels, chains, and tourism board to mitigate the fluctuations in leisure travel and focus on attracting more MICE events.
While Indian hotels have the necessary infrastructure to host MICE events, challenges such as finding the right planners, limited budgets, staffing issues, and time constraints are real and need to be addressed to secure more business. To overcome these hurdles, hotels are increasingly turning to technology as a solution.
By adopting the right technology solutions, hotels can connect with active planners sourcing MICE venues while streamlining their operations, reducing costs, and improving efficiency. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is at the forefront of technological advancements, and it is imperative for the Indian hotel industry to follow global trends and best practices to remain competitive and attract more MICE business.
Emerging technology trends for hotels to leverage in India
End-to-end platforms for MICE business: The demand for comprehensive platforms that facilitate collaboration between planners and hospitality professionals is on the rise. These venue sourcing platforms enable venues or destinations to connect with planners who are sourcing over their need dates, enhance their visibility, and attract potential buyers. Utilising a single platform allows hotels to engage with buyers, establish meaningful connections, and maximise revenue per available room (RevPAR) and market share. AI-powered features like natural language search and writing assistants available across these platforms eases the job of a supplier by simplifying the prospecting process and enable personalised outreach to planners.
Enhancing digital showcasing: Given the time constraints faced by planners, hotels need to reimagine how they showcase their spaces digitally. Incorporating event diagramming technology, photo-realistic 3D representations, interactive floor plans, and custom diagramming options empower planners to not only explore all the areas of the property virtually without physical site-visits, but also visualise their own events coming to life, thereby making informed decisions. Technology like AI diagram assistants empowers hotel operations teams with the ability to deliver precise, customised floorplans and room layouts, making the process more efficient and user-friendly.
Streamlining RFP Management: Hotels often face challenges related to limited budgets and staffing shortages when managing requests for proposals (RFPs) from event organisers. Automating and standardising the RFP process enables hotels to respond promptly and accurately. AI enabled platforms can assist suppliers in referencing past RFP responses and generate answers to custom questions from planners, reducing the time taken by their sales teams to complete and respond to proposals. RFP Agenda builder which is also powered by AI allows planners to build comprehensive agendas within seconds.
Efficient group room block management: Effectively managing room blocks is crucial for successful events. The traditional method of manually sharing rooming lists via email attachments is prone to errors and lacks security and collaboration. Technology solutions such as Passkey simplify the booking and confirmation of guest rooms and meetings online, minimising human intervention and ensuring data security and reliability. Instant book is another tool that helps planners to directly block small meeting spaces without delving into long RFP processes.
Business Intelligence for performance improvement: To surpass competitors and identify areas of opportunity, hotels require critical insights into market conditions. Business intelligence suites can provide insights into RFP trends, response activities, win ratios, pace against expected demand, and other key performance metrics. Business intelligence also enables hotels and venue operators to evaluate their group performance relative to their competition and to identify opportunities for improvement.
MICE sector in India is playing a crucial role in the tourism industry, making a substantial contribution to revenue and providing the necessary impetus to the local economy. Embracing global technology trends and leveraging AI-powered solutions can empower hotels in India to tap into the growing MICE market exponentially.
Author bio: Sandeep Nagpal is Vice President and Head of Marketing in India at Cvent
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