Introduction
Travel Quest, Inc., is a full-service travel agency with a meetings & events division that focuses on customer service, operational efficiencies and revenue optimization.
Travel Quest is also the ‘Market Concierge’ provider for High Point Market, the largest furnishings industry trade show in the world, bringing more than 75,000 people to High Point, North Carolina, every six months. Serious retail home furnishings buyers, interior designers, architects, and others in the home furnishings industry attend High Point up to twice a year.
In preparation for attending High Point Market, attendees and exhibitors are directed to High Point’s website post registration to ‘plan their trip’. As High Point’s appointed ‘Market Concierge’, Travel Quest offers one-stop shopping for hotel and travel services to attendees allowing them to submit a request for full-service travel assistance directly from their agents.
While Travel Quest is the high touch ‘Market Concierge’, High Point’s ‘plan your trip’ section of their website also promotes other booking channels such as private home rentals, hotel, airline and rail websites. This open marketplace erodes Travel Quest’s optimal number of customers using their service resulting in missed revenue earnings and High Point’s ability to track hotel reservations generated to the local community.
Objectives
“My goals were to find a solution that allowed us to capture individuals that do not leverage our ‘Market Concierge’ and that go to other sites for self-service bookings, as well as better monitor individuals that are registered for the event but have not called or emailed the office for service”, Lee Allen, President of at Travel Quest.
In his research to find an online hotel booking engine with the ability to customize the branding for an event and ultimately allow him to capture incremental hotel bookings, Mr. Allen explored various online booking tools and distribution platforms. He engaged with his contacts at Travelport where he was introduced to Groupize, a Travelport Marketplace partner.
Travel Quest determined that Groupize provided the right blend of simplicity, ability to customize the event booking page to High Point Markets’ brand standards, and provide an online experience for attendees, ensuring that Travel Quest provided the high service standards expected by High Point Market while broadening their reach through a web offering. Furthermore that it took under 15 minutes to customize and publish the site and that there were no technical resources required for the solution was an added bonus.
Phase 1
To ensure the Groupize platform would meet the needs of the High Point attendees and exhibitors, Travel Quest focused their launch on the October 2018 High Point Market to assess the possibility of increasing their hotel bookings through an online booking platform. For the launch, Travel Quest customized an Event Booking Page offering hotels located near the venue and provided instructions on what do for the bookings. By launching an Event Booking page with Groupize, Travel Quest strived to ensure the user experience was exceptional, did not increase the workload for the high-touch ‘Market Concierge’ team, and would be easy to support and manage the event.
For the October 2018 High Point Market, Travel Quest had identified a select number of registrants that were not using their high-touch ‘Market Concierge’ service, and were also most likely using other sites to book their travel. Travel Quest and High Market worked to capture these registrants hotel bookings by publishing the link on the event website and in select communications.
Phase 1 Results
By simply launching a Groupize Event Booking page, Travel Quest captured an incremental 410 bookings (an 8% increase) without increasing the workload on their Agent Team. The average stay at High Point Market is 3+ days, so Travel Quest’s realized an incremental $24,700 in revenues on one event. This represents a 685% ROI on their investment in Groupize, with just one event.
410 Bookings
(an 8% increase)
$24,700 Revenue
(revenue on one event)
685% ROI in Groupize
Event Booking
(one event)
Future Growth
As the Groupize Event Booking page met all of the operational and strategic requirements of Travel Quest and impressed High Point Market by the simplicity and positive attendee experience, High Point Market will incorporate a Groupize Event Booking Page link to their own registration process accessible to all 75,000 High Point Attendees.
In addition to being a core component to the event registration process, the event booking page will also be accessible from the event website. Both Travel Quest and High Point Market have indicated a 100% growth in online bookings would benefit their organizations by providing insights into which demographic of attendees require hotel reservations, who can be marketed to for additional travel services such as airline tickets and provide the necessary insight into hotel production to further secure promotional rates for High Point Attendees.
Travel Quest and High Point Market are confident that with the allocation of additional marketing resources, their success will continue to grow – with returns of up to 1000% growth in hotel reservations through their channel.
