|
Virtual Site Inspection – Is It the
Next Best Thing to Being There?
Updated ©2000 Corbin Ball Associates
Meeting planners -- are you tired of sorting
through stacks of hotel brochures every week? Or hefting heavy hotel and
facility guides? Or managing your burgeoning file cabinet with all of the
promotional materials you receive?
There is relief – and it is spelled "world
wide web!" It is now possible to search the net for information for most of
the meeting facilities around. Hotel chains are building significant meeting
planning sections to their web sites including: floor plans, photos of meeting
space, 360º photos, sounds, and even movie clips of meeting venues. This
information is available for free, around the clock, around the world, in a
format that gives far more information than a static, dated brochure.
Why are hotels embracing the web?
Over 5 million U.S. consumers used the Net for
the first time in Q1 2000 alone (Telecommunications Report International, June
2000)!
These surfers tend to be affluent and likely to spend money on
travel. Web travel purchases are by far and away the top sales item on the Web
in terms of dollars spent. As events are closely tied to travel, meeting
planners are turning to the web in record numbers as well. Hotels are identifying the web
as a major information and sales vehicle for meeting planners.
What’s out there?
Listed below are some of the better examples of how web sites can be used to
conduct virtual site inspections.
Gateways:
The PlanSoft (www.plansoft.com) site
should be the first stop in your virtual site inspection tour. It is extensively
searchable by city, region, hotel type, hotel chain, size of meeting space,
number of sleeping rooms, amount of exhibit space, climate and more. Most
listings contain full contact information, web links, meeting room
specifications and much more. It even has a built-in request for proposal (RFP)
module that can be used to email proposals to multiple hotels of your choice.
Brochure Sites:
Turnberry Isle Resort (www.turnberryisle.com)
is a great example of how a large amount of information can be provided to the
planner in a simple and easy format. Clicking on the "Meetings" link
from the home page and then on the "Table of Contents" link will yield
a full screen of hyperlinks showing just about anything that a event planner
could want to know. This includes floor plans, meeting room specs, catering
menus/pricing, AV equipment/pricing, exhibit regulations, group billing
information, and much more. This is more than a hotel would ever normally mail
to a prospective client. Yet, using the web, the hotel can provide it almost
free to anyone in the world that visits the site.
Floor Plans:
The Santa Clara Convention Center (http://www.santaclara.org/floor.html)
provides and excellent example of how floor plans can be delivered in a useful
manner using an Adobe "plug-in." (A plug-in is free downloadable
software that adds additional functionality to your web browser). Once this is
loaded, click on "floor plan" and you will be treated to a floor plan
that is scalable (you can zoom in or out) and can be manipulated and printed in
very clear and easy to use manner.
Hilton Hotels, in cooperation with CEO Software (www.optimumsettings.com/hilton.htm),
allows visitors to download the floor plans from many their hotels along with
room diagramming software. Once the software is loaded, you can place chairs,
desks and staging on the floor plans. Another alliance with PlanSoft and the
more
full-featured Meeting Matrix (www.meetingmatrix.com)
diagramming software is planned in the near future.
360º Views
360º views allow visitors to view an image as if they are standing in one
spot and turning in a circle. My favorite surround view site is the Swissôtel’s
www.swissotel.com. Click on
"Virtual Site Inspection" and follow the instructions. This uses the
Ipix plug-in (free from the site or from www.ipix.com..
Visitors can look around in a circle, straight up or down, zooming in and out as
if they are standing in front of the Drake Hotel in New York as well as in its
meeting rooms. An audio track explaining the hotel features accompanies the
exterior image of the Drake. This is perfect for trying to narrow down if a
meeting space is suitable for a group.
Virtual Reality (VR)
VR is in its developmental stages but holds great potential for the meetings
industry. At the Planet9 site http://www.planet9.com/worlds/marriott/ballroom/ballroom.wrl
using your mouse cursor for direction, you can "fly" through the New
Orleans Marriott Grand Ballroom.
It requires a VRML 2.0 plug-in available for free at this site. You can get a
virtual tour of the New Orleans Marriott Lobby and Grand Ballroom there as well.
As the technology develops, there is tremendous potential here for decorators,
production companies, and caterers to be able to visualize and walk through
space that has yet to be built.
Streaming Audio and Video
Streaming technology brings moving pictures and audio to your web browser
over the phone lines with nothing to load to your hard drive except another
plug-in. Go to www.hotelview.com and
download the Real Player 5.0 plug-in. You can then choose from 90 hotels and get
moving pictures with audio of the lobby, meeting space, athletic facilities, and
more. Depending on your modem speed, the picture may be small and jerky, but
still there is much more here than static brochures. There are professional
speaker sites (i.e. http://speakersonvideo.com/)
that offer video clips of speaker presentation without having to wait to be sent
a VCR promo package.
Examples of sites that offer more than a static
brochure abound. The web won’t replace an actual site inspection for some time
– we’ll likely be waiting a while for the Star Trek holodeck! However, it is
possible to use the web to narrow your searches, to gather venue information,
and to eliminate the need for the stacks and of brochures that pile on your
desktop.
If you find this article helpful, please let me
know by signing the Guest Book in the Contact
Corbin Section..
BACK TO ARTICLES LIST
|
