Meetings management is about more than just bringing people to a table- it is an opportunity to foster personal connection and build business relationships.

IHG understood the importance of catering to the needs of their hoteliers and buyers, and partnered with BW Events Tech to build the perfect solution for their exclusive IHG Ignite 2024 customer and hotel conference in Berlin.

The BW Events Tech team had been in the process of building a new meetings solution- but working with IHG they were able to customize the roadmap to incorporate IHG’s needs and custom requirements.

The Problem

You can’t just open a bar and call it networking. Building connections is about getting the right people in the right place at the right time- and making sure they have something mutually beneficial to discuss.

IHG wanted to ensure that their attendees got the most value out of their time at the conference. They understood that to be truly successful, meetings at their conference needed to be relationship driven and feel organic.

They needed something that would:

• Allow hotels and customers attending the conference to review each other’s profiles
• Launch before the event so both parties could book qualified on-site meetings
• Have a central calendar that would show booked meetings, showcase available slots, display sessions and link to personal calendars
• Be easy to use on mobile and desktop
• Allow the customer to book meeting time slots over the course of two days in 15 and 30 minute intervals

With these parameters in mind, the BW Events Tech team got to work to craft a custom meetings solution that put ease of use at the heart of the project.

The Solution

Once the BW Events Tech team understood the relationship-first requirements of these meetings, the team got to work to facilitate the digital environment for facilitating meaningful connections.

Paying attention to the importance of usability and functionality the team:

• Launched meetings 2 months before the event with detailed profiles so hotels & attendees could prioritize qualified meetings
• Showed available meetings in an ‘explore meetings’ tab so attendees could easily fill open time slots & reach their daily booking minimum
• Enabled attendees to be able to book in meetings with hotels they met at the conference’s various networking activities via the event app
• Built an integration with the Amego so that attendees could access their meetings in the event app. This app was accessible via the app store
• Featured unlimited meeting types in the meetings tool so the event organizers were able to configure exactly what was needed for the time slots
• Collected metrics about the meetings, including meetings booked, checked-in and canceled

In addition to hitting these important metrics, the BW team was also able to adapt when needed. For example, onsite when attendees shifted from booking meetings on their desktop to booking meetings on mobile the team learned that there was some difficulty for some of the users when it came to pressing a button. Instead of taking this as a learning experience, the team jumped into action and the dev team was able to modify, test and release an update within 20 minutes.

While BW believes that getting things perfect is important, the team believes that is as equality important to be able to adapt and problem solve when unforeseen changes come your way.

The Takeaway

When you bring the right people to the table at the right time, magic happens.

Because IHG understood their event attendee’s ethos and were committed to driving those needs via their event tech, their event was a success. Hoteliers were able to leverage BW’s custom meetings tool to meet with at least 7 quality prospects per day, and attendees maximized their time, all while still feeling personal. In addition, the event boasted an industry standard breaking 99% app download rate- proving attendees made it a priority to use the solution and engage with one another.

Whether it’s hoteliers and buyers, 1:1 ancillary meetings, sales and hosted buyers or whatever your event’s specific needs, you have the opportunity to drive value for your event attendees via your meetings tool.

There are a lot of great products on the market, but if you are still looking for one that fits your exact needs- the experts at BW Events Tech can help you find the best solution for your needs. Maybe that solution is a tool on the market or maybe it’s helping shape BW’s ShowUp Meetings Manager’s roadmap. Either way, BW is here to help, committed to being platform agnostic and just a click away.