MICE outsourcing: The trend from the USA reaches Germany
Bernd Fritzges talks about the latest MICE trends at the CVENT CONNECT conference
The challenges in the MICE sector are omnipresent: a shortage of skilled workers, rising labor costs and growing demands on the speed of proposal processing. Outsourcing solutions are already widely used in the USA and globally. But in Germany, too, it has been recognized that outsourcing is a viable model for the future.
Why outsourcing is becoming the solution
How Skift Meetings reports in a recent article, many companies are turning to "just-in-time" talent - freelance professionals who are hired for specific tasks such as hotel contracts, sourcing or registrations. These models offer flexibility and help to bridge short-term capacity bottlenecks.
The demand for flexible outsourcing models in the MICE sector is growing, especially in Germany. However, at MICE DESK we offer a solution that goes far beyond temporary or project-based support: from taking over the entire MICE process to providing seasonal support during peak periods, our team can offer hotels flexible solutions that are tailored to their exact needs. The seamless integration of our professionals into the hotels' internal processes ensures that they act like internal staff, but with the added strength of technological optimization.
Technology and skilled workers: the formula for success
We believe that our key to success is the combination of highly qualified professionals and a technology-driven solution. MICE DESK meets the current challenges of the industry by covering the entire process chain in Convention & Group Sales. From the acceptance of offers to system maintenance, offer and contract preparation and invoicing - everything is handled by our employees without the hotels having to provide additional resources.
The link between our innovative technologies and the central hotel systems (property management systems, PMS) is particularly noteworthy. This allows processes to be designed efficiently and the workload in the hotels to be reduced. The BI (Business Intelligence) tool developed in-house also offers extensive KPI evaluations that enable hotel partners to monitor their efficiency - a reporting tool that many hotels cannot offer in this form.
Optimized offer times and increased conversion
A study commissioned by us clearly shows how important the speed of the offer process is. An analysis of more than 7000 offers created for partner hotels shows that the speed of the offer has a direct influence on the conversion rate. Offers that are created within 4-5 hours achieve a conversion rate of 55.88%, while longer response times of over 24 hours significantly reduce the conversion rate. These fast response times not only enable hotels to act faster, but also to increase sales.
Flexibility and innovation in Germany
While outsourcing is already firmly established in the MICE sector in the USA and worldwide, we are going one step further in Germany. By combining industry expertise and advanced technology, outsourcing becomes a holistic solution for hotels, enabling both complete takeovers and temporary support. This flexible approach ensures that the needs of the hotel industry are not only met, but exceeded through optimized processes and increased efficiency.
We have shown that outsourcing is not only established in the German market, but is already more innovative in many aspects than in other countries. Outsourcing often means using offshore service providers with low-paid workers - or even more problematic: local employees are poorly paid in order to keep costs down.
"At MICE DESK, we take a completely different approach," explains Bernd Fritzges, Managing Director of MICE DESK. "We create added value for the hotel industry through productivity gains resulting from our continuous investment in technology. Instead of using cheap labour as leverage, we increase efficiency through technological optimization and make it possible to employ only qualified professionals."
This model allows hotels not only to benefit from highly qualified professionals, but also to take advantage of significant savings through the increased use of technology. We at MICE DESK thus become a reliable partner that offers sustainable outsourcing solutions that contribute to the long-term success of hotels.
Are you ready to optimize your MICE processes and sustainably increase your efficiency? Contact us and find out how our solutions can revolutionize your hotel processes - with qualified specialists and state-of-the-art technology at your side.