Peninsula Hotels promotes new meetings programme

HONG KONG The Peninsula Hotels group has launched an integrated meetings programme, combining online booking with personalised service and special venue choices. The group website www.peninsula.com/meetings offers a comprehensive floorplan section, where meeting planners can view each function room's seating layouts, audio-visual facilities and power socket locations. A 'Meeting Room Finder' enables planners to choose venues for each event by entering search criteria, such as number of participants and nature of the event. Arthur Kiong, vice-president sales and marketing, said: "We are already noticing a large increase in enquiries since the launch of the new meetings programme - as much as triple the usual number of enquiries per month for some of our hotels. The enquiry and conversion rates vary from hotel to hotel, but overall we are very pleased by the response from meeting planners and event organisers." A specially selected meetings consultant will act as a single point of contact throughout the planning and execution of the event. "The Peninsula Hotels are not usually known as group hotels, but do take smaller, high-end groups. One difference between the approach taken by The Peninsula Hotels and others is that with many hotels, group business is delegated to more junior executives and members of staff to take care of." "However, as groups booking at Peninsula Hotels tend to comprise far higher-profile and/or high-end guests, it is essential that the meeting consultant in each property is a seasoned professional, skilled and experienced in taking care of VIP groups. "Thus the meeting planners in each property have been with the respective hotel for a long time and are well versed in handling the requirements of elite groups to deliver a seamless experience. "The unique venues complement the various hotels and Peninsula Hotels' brand positioning well, especially for these high-end groups. For example, regular meetings or staff training sessions can take place in a variety of locations, in hotels or other venues. "Meetings held by clients at Peninsula Hotels, however, tend to be higher profile and/or of high corporate value, and thus with such a wide variety of venues in each property, our venues come into their own as we can offer locations and programmes unavailable elsewhere," Kiong said. The Peninsula Hotels group operates four deluxe hotels in Asia, The Peninsula Hong Kong, The Peninsula Bangkok, The Peninsula Palace Beijing and The Peninsula Manila.