We’re delighted you are part of MeetingsInn. No doubt your pub profile is looking amazing and now you are waiting for those all-important bookings. Well, that is where we step in and are actively driving meeting enquiries to a myriad of pubs across our site. However, to make that final step really work, it is important to make sure you don’t miss a trick.
Therefore, we have created four simple steps to make sure you and your team are geared up and ready to manage those enquiries:
STEP ONE: Think differently about your space
Meetings are not food and beverage sales under a different guise.
What do we mean by that? Well, to make meetings work, pubs need to shift away from thinking if people are eating and drinking then we won’t charge for the room. You will be missing a trick. Alternatively, you may want to consider offering a Day Delegate Rate (DDR). This is a fixed per person cost which you can establish up front including the key elements required to make an event work. What is included is entirely up to you, but it would generally include:
- Main meeting room hire and parking
- Facilities – projector, screen, Wi-Fi, flipchart and pens
- Break refreshments
- Lunch
The choice is yours, but don’t miss a trick and not charge for the space itself. If you are not sure about what level to pitch your DDR, then we can easily help you. The other upside of this is it will also make it easier for your teams to understand and explain when taking a booking enquiry.
STEP TWO: Communicate what meetings in your pub mean
Stop for a moment and think, does everyone know what having a meeting in your pub entails? From the outset it is good idea to make sure they all know you are part of MeetingsInn, which areas of the pub are part of the meetings offering, why you are doing it and what it involves. Obviously, it is ultimately all about bringing more money into your business, which is why it is even more important to take that moment to talk to your team about it.
And sadly, let’s face it, in our industry team dynamics often shift. New people are frequently joining, and they have a lot to learn. So, when they are going through their induction, one element should also be about how best to use your underutilised space with business meetings.
STEP THREE: Establish an approach for responding to meeting enquiries
Don’t throw money away, just because the person answering the phone doesn’t know how to book the space. This is something we are frequently encountering, which is tragic when it could be a meeting for 20 people with lunch too. Make sure even if your people don’t feel empowered to have a lengthy conversation that they gather the core details from the caller, so you can quickly go back.
STEP FOUR: Don’t leave it…time is of the essence
This is uber important! Many meeting bookers will be researching a variety of venues when looking for a particular space. They will therefore need answers promptly. In fact, the ideal would be within a couple of hours of an enquiry being made. So don’t rely on one individual in the pub having to confirm the details, encourage several key individuals to have the authority to make decisions and book the space, so if one person is not in someone else is able to respond.
Simple steps, but ones that could make all that difference to the success of your pub meetings. And if you are not sure or want to explore any aspect further, then we are here to help. Just reach out and we can talk through how you can make sure you make the most out of your meetings revenue.