Newcastle Gateshead Initiative switch to ConferenceBOOKINGS
Headed by Anna Moroney, the accommodation booking service handles large volumes of group and individual bookings for specific events taking place across the destination. The transition from their existing in-house accommodation booking system to ConferenceBOOKINGS took just three days to complete during which the new ConferenceBOOKINGS system was populated with venue data and all twenty live events loaded complete with allocations and pricing.
"The system is prepared prior to the training", said Tim Clark of Velvet Software, "once on-site all the necessary hotel set-up data and the first event are loaded in the first day's session. By the end of day two they had a bespoke image gallery selling the destination, custom event images and corporate branding loaded.".
Ease of use and the continued system enhancement were all influencing factors in NGI's choice for a new on-line booking system. Having trained the team of four users, Velvet Software will return to the destination in just under a week to train up to sixty of the local accommodation providers. The benefits to the team are not only with in-house time-savings as Tim explains, "Providing training for the accommodation providers as well as the bureau staff enables staff at each hotel to directly load and manage allocations and pricing at certain times controlled by the bureau; this results in more communication with fewer direct telephone calls and emails between the bureau and their members".
