'Better guest experience and more sales'

Integrated Meeting & Events module in PMS offers many advantages

For the middle segment of the hotel industry, handling Meeting & Events (M&E) is often not without problems. There is no separate banquet reservations department to handle meeting rooms and events, and if hotel staff have to work with a separate M&E solution alongside the usual property management system - PMS for short - this often causes confusion and errors. The company VIPS PMS offers a solution by being one of the first cloud-based PMS systems to incorporate a comprehensive Meeting & Events module.

Managing reservations, invoicing, guest communications and revenu management was already very easy with the existing VIPS CloudPMS, and over the past year the company has been working hard to expand with an integrated M&E module. This makes it possible to book meeting rooms and events directly from the PMS. "This approach is not only cost-efficient, but also offers operational benefits as hoteliers now only have to work with one system," says Bert-Jan Evers, Director of Sales Benelux at VIPS PMS. 

More consistent guest experience

According to Evers, incorporating the M&E module into the PMS brings many more benefits: "The integrated Meeting & Events creates overview and efficiency for hotel staff; it frees up their time and energy for other things, including sales. In practice, mid-market hotels often do not have the resources for a separate banquet reservations department and employees often wear several hats. Our new solution gives staff a better overview of everything that needs to be done for an event, enabling them to create better quality events with a more consistent experience for the guest. The latter is also possible thanks to the comprehensive nature of the Meeting & Events module, which includes overviews of hotel and M&E reservations, online group registration, and of course function sheets, general or per department."

Flexible financial handling

Another plus of a built-in Meeting & Events solution is that it considerably eases the financial handling of events, continues Evers: "Everything is kept in one place. This not only saves a lot of time, but also offers the option of interesting financial insights. All in all, this extension of our PMS on the one hand ensures a better guest experience, while on the other hand it can undoubtedly lead to an increase in turnover as it enables hoteliers to operate more efficiently."