I recently caught up with Ciaran Delaney founder of Meetingsbooker, this innovative website allows businesspeople to book or receive instant quotes for hotel meeting and conference rooms, book refreshments and even reserve their equipment requirements.

They offer a real sales channel for hotel meeting rooms and charge based on performance.

On Meetingsbooker businesses or individuals can book over 1,700 meeting rooms online in 18 countries. Initially the site provided conference rooms in Dublin, London, Glasgow and other UK and Ire cities but they have since expanded to Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Stockholm, Oslo and even as far as Singapore and Hong Kong.

Meetingsbooker.com was set up by Ciaran Delaney who is an experienced hotel and tourism e-marketing specialist, he explains ‘We set out to help people source meeting rooms in a quick and effective manner by presenting room hire rates and special offers online.

Venues can offer live availability or accept instant quotes, bookers love the service as it saves them time and hassle emailing different venues or waiting on RFP's'.

Meetingsbooker.com has a very attractive sales model, hotels and venues can join for free. A €390 listing fee is charged only after the venue has received in excess of €450 in confirmed bookings. With an average booking value of €2,300 this won't take long!' It's refreshing to see a pure performance based model.

Meetingsbooker also offers their software which can be added to the hotels own website. I find this very interesting as it allows hotels to develop direct online bookings through their own websites. The system can present live meeting room availability or simply deliver instant quotes.

One of the major benefits for hotels is that they can yield meeting rooms by presenting special offers for traditionally quieter days eg. Monday and Friday. Hotels can also set up booker rewards to encourage regular meeting room bookings.

The system is now in place on a number of Clarion properties in Scandinavia as well as Holiday Inn and Bewleys Hotels in the UK and Ireland. "We find the system frees up a lot of our time dealing with small meeting enquiries, we receive a strong steady flow of meeting room bookings from the system and find it extremely cost effective" Karlie Foster, Park Plaza Belfast International Airport Hotel.

For more information visit www.meetingsbooker.com/about.html

Cheers,
Patrick - Xotels

www.xotels.com