What’s fall season all about?
If you guessed colorful leaves, football games, pumpkin patches, or Halloween… you’d be right.
But that’s not what we’re getting at here.
For business travelers, fall is all about meetings and events. And lots of them.
Companies gather for things like industry conferences, client demos, office openings, store launches, company off-sites, and even hackathons through the year. And they do it even more frequently during the fall.
Which means…
If your team is going to do the same and you haven’t started planning, you might want to get on it.
You’re probably trying to wrap your head around the daunting task of all the upcoming travel plans. Maybe procrastinating a bit because of all the work you know it will take.
Trust us when we say we ‘get it’. It’s because we ‘get it’ that we created Gant Together™
We have a little bit of experience in juggling multiple travel reservations all at once. That experince helped build our meetings and events tool. It’s also why we keep the tool priced well-below what the industry usually charges for meeting-travel tools that do what it can do.
Planning a well-organized (and within-budget) team event doesn’t have to be scary.
It also doesn’t have to be overwhelming.
And working out all the travel details shouldn’t have to be your only job for days (or weeks) in advance of the event.
With Gant Together™ planners can stop toiling over the travel details and keep their focus on what matters most: the meeting or event itself. By attaching our industry-leading technology to our award-winning customer service, Gant has developed an end-to-end meetings and events platform defined by its simple, flexible experience for both organizers and travelers alike.
Using the Gant Together tool improves the experience for you (and your attendees) by allowing you to…
#1 Simplify planning and registration for meetings and events
Planning a meeting or event is far from a simple task (without all of the extra steps that come about when it includes multiple members of your team travelling on a planned schedule). Every minute counts when you’re trying to get everyone on the same page. You shouldn’t have to spend valuable time chasing down your attendees’ personal information, reservation details, etc. There’s too many Ts to cross to keep track of it all.
Plus, each of your attendees will probably also want you to consider their air carrier and hotel chain preferences, favorite frequent traveler programs, and any existing calendar restraints. Just the thought of trying to keep track of it all is stressful.
Collecting key traveler details and putting a communication plan in place before attendees are allowed to book travel is key to avoiding the back-and-forth email/phone onslaught that happens when tracking isn’t in place.
Gant Together simplifies the registration process. Whether attendees have an existing traveler profile or not, there’s no need to collect details in advance. In just a few clicks, you can build personalized email invitations that contain a registration link and custom questions for your meeting or event.
#2 Streamline the booking process for attendees
Once attendees have the green light to book travel, things can get hectic without a controlled system in place. There are a ton of factors that go into bringing a group together for a successful meeting/event. Not only should you ensure everyone understands the timeline, booking process and budget expectations, but you also have to keep track of what’s being booked as it comes in.
That is… If you don’t have Gant Together to do it for you.
Gant Together sends your pre-built invitations to attendees and prompts them to book travel for your meeting or event. By following the registration link within this email, attendees will have access to select their flights, hotels, or rental cars in a matter of minutes. (It works on mobile too.) Plus, both you and your attendees will receive confirmation of all bookings.
Meetings and events no longer need to consist of misplaced travelers, forgotten answers, or attendees that book their flight home too early and miss out on important announcements at the final event. Applying policy constraints to all reservations and offering concise, detailed response summaries to both attendees and planners can make realizing your plans easier than ever.
#3 Set policy and spend controls for meetings and events travel
Travelling with your whole team (or even part of it) is bound to come with a lot of questions. Everyone has their own preferences. Some travelers want an executive suite. Others might prefer a king room. Some may need their reservations double-checked because they don’t like to follow the rules. And there could even be a few who staunchly prefer a different airline or hotel than the rest of the group (and, like the previous group, don’t like to follow the rules). Setting pre-booking rules for who needs approval, who can travel first class, and who’s sharing a room can save you from a lot of question-answering and favor-begging headaches.
With Gant Together, you have the option to pre-build policy constraints and custom questions that apply to bookings and combine with the platform’s robust automation to provide you with booking summaries, arrival and departure manifests, and integral responses. These features offer the ability to influence your travelers’ booking behaviors without all the constant monitoring and tracking…. and reminding.
You can even set unlimited policies based on an unlimited number of traveler types (like standard, executive, or VIP) and set which one will/won’t affect an attendee. Policy can be applied by attendee, by attendee group, by meeting, or for all meetings.
You can set policy for arrival times, departure times, airlines, hotel properties or chains, and rental car companies. You don’t have to worry about going over budget, either, since Gant Together allows planners to set policy around pricing for all travel types. And, if you choose, you can even specify preferred departure and arrival airports for your attendees (for example, you could set policy that requires all of your attendees to arrive at JFK between 12pm and 3pm the day before the event, so everyone can ride together to the hotel, and then ensure budget goals by restricting attendee flight options to only allow those within $150 of the lowest fare available… for everyone except your big boss, of course).
#4 Provide bleisure travel options
Speaking of meeting and events policy…
Recent studies discovered that over 90% of business travelers will consider extending their work trips at their own expense. As the next generations make their way into roles that travel for work, they’re wanting bleisure as an option. Add in the fact that nearly everyone is still feeling a little couped up from the prolonged travel restrictions from years past (and the cost of travel keeps going up and up), it’s easy to see why work travelers are all about taking blending their work trip with a day or two of away-from-home time.
Gant Together makes it easy for planners to let attendees “get their bleisure on”, by offering policy that allows them to come early or stay later – if the itinerary is within budget for your meeting/event, of course. You can also choose whether travel is going to be paid for (at least initially) with the company card on file, a new card, individual pay, or configured by attendee.
Maybe your bleisure travelers may want to bring their spouses or other plus-ones along? Why not let them make a workcation out of it? In Gant Together, allowing attendees to travel with guests is as simple as a yes or no answer during the meeting-build process. The tool handles the rest.
#5 Negotiate discounted rates for meetings and events
Experts warned us that travel prices were going to increase along with demand in 2023.
They were right.
Hotels have led the charge as prices keep going up, breaking record after record in the first two quarters. STR and Tourism Economics expect the trend to continue. They’re predicting the average nightly US room to be $154.28 this year (3.5% higher than 2022).
As these rates get higher… and higher… so are costs for meeting and events travel.
Before you jump into planning headfirst, it’s always a good idea to consider the airlines, hotels, and car rental agencies your organization generally books with for transient travel. Leveraging previous volume usually helps to secure the best possible rates. Plus, when it comes to hotels, if more than 10 of your travelers will be staying in one place, you can secure a room block rate.
Gant Together comes with Gant’s vendor negotiation services – automatically. Whether you’re looking for a room block, want host your entire meeting/event at a specific hotel, or need 20 seats on the same flight, our team can help you check all of the needed boxes. At Gant, we help our clients get access to discounts wherever possible. All thanks to our agency-level negotiating powers, chainwide agreements, day-one discounts, and dynamic consortia rates. We have well-developed relationships and advisory-board memberships with most of today’s leading suppliers. All of which is available in the Gant Together tool.
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Time to start planning your next meeting or event and want to use Gant Together?
Not ready to plan yet but want to talk meetings/events and Gant Together features?
Contact your Gant Account Manager, they’re always ready to talk shop. Or check out our previous blog post on The Return to In-Person Meetings and Events: 7 Tips for Corporate Planners.
Not a Gant client yet? Get in touch at [email protected].
