Best Practices For Working With Your Hotel Partners As presented by William Bassett SXSW Housing Tech Liaison

We will be covering… Some basics of how SXSW Housing operates with it’s hotels – Holding reservations until cutoff – Contracting Keeping up with your hotels – Checklists – Hotel Contacts Training hoteliers on MMX and your processes – Getting your hotels into HCP training – But provide them your own material as well How often to communicate with your hotels and what type of content to share with them. – Keeping the hoteliers involved and CYA – Monthly newsletter communications – Dedicated address for all hoteliers

How SXSW Operates With it’s Hotels 1.Keep Reservations Until Cutoff 1.We do this so we can have complete control over our inventory and move people at will with as few of hurdles as possible. 2.Wait list, wait list, wait list 2.Multi-year Contracts 1.With addendums as necessary to update 1.Policies 2.Inventory 3.Rates 4.Etc… 2.Our contracting is done by a combination of SXSW Housing staff and our Planning department

How YOU Operate With Your Hotels 1.Do you give your hotels immediate access to the reservations or hold them? What are some of the advantages you find to your method? 2.What is the average length of your contracts for multi-year events?

Keeping Track of Your Hotels 1.Keep Checklists 1.We have three primary check lists we work off of… 1.Hotel checklist by event 2.Contracted inventory by event 3.Training – Rank the hoteliers to prioritize who needs training, we’ll be going deeper into this in the upcoming slides.

Keeping Track of Your Hotels (cont’d) 1.Hotel Contacts 1.We use a Filemaker database to keep track of… 1.Who is in what role at what hotel 2.Turnover

How do you keep track of your hotels and hoteliers?

Training 1.Get your hoteliers scheduled to do the monthly HCP training regularly 1.Due to the nature of our events about half of our hotels go 11 months of the year not using MMX. I created a tiered ranking system to determine priority of who I ask to attend. 1.All hotelier were ranked Veteran with multiple events under their belt 2.Veteran with on event under their belt 3.Rookie to MMX who has never worked an event with us. 2.Majority of the HCP training was done within 3 months of the hotel’s cutoff date.

Training (cont’d) 1.Have your own training material 1.Nobody knows how you want the hotels to utilize the system more than yourself. I took the great document MMX provided in the MCP and modified it to fit my needs. 2.This allowed me to streamline the process for my hoteliers and deliver the information I want them to have.

Do you train your hoteliers or send them to the monthly HCP training from MMX?

Communications 1.Keep the hotels involved and CYA 1.Between building the event and (ideally) launch have each hotel verify the following information is correct. 1.Inventory 2.Rates 3.Room Reservation Agreement 4.Amenities 2.Monthly newsletter to hotels. We cover: 1.Pick up check up 2.Event announcements that will drive pick up 3.Getting to know your housing team 4.Payment questions (when closer to event dates) 5.General inquiries to all hotels such as transportation or FnB suggestions

Communications (cont’d) 1.Dedicated address for all hoteliers 1.All of our hotels when in season now are instructed to only 2.Some advantages to this are: 1.Easier for them to remember who to 2.Easier for us to organize and keep track of one inbox 3.Simplified turnover of responsibility internally if necessary 4.Multiple eyes on the means work can be distributed 3.Keep turnaround on communications as quick as possible 1.In the month leading up to and post cutoff our average response time on s from hoteliers was 1-2 hours. 2.Even if the answer was “I need more time looking into this now”

Hurdles we encounter 1.Hotels selling into our blocks 2.Hotelier turnover without notification 3.Hoteliers forgetting their logins to MMX. 4.Revenue managers outside of local hotels adjusting rates 5.Arguing against pre payment as our reservations start up to eight months in advance 6.Affiliate functions not being approved

What are some hurdles you encounter?

Recap & Highlights 1.Keep track of your hoteliers, their expertise with MMX, and turnover. 2.Get your hotelier the expertise they need for all to succeed. 3.Stay communicative and responsive. Don’t be afraid to start the conversation with them.

General Q & A