Marston Hotels has launched a real-time conference and event booking website that it claims is the world’s first.
The website – www.marstonvenues.com – allows conference booking agents and consumers to check availability and make a provisional or confirmed online booking within minutes.
The chain of 12 four-star hotels said it received £22,000 worth of bookings in the first day of launch.
The fully automated system was developed and is operated in partnership with Kinetic Solutions, of Cranfield University.
Marston Hotels director John Cotter said: “This is going to revolutionise the way we do business. When you’ve got almost 70 staff amending bookings and availability for 223 meeting rooms throughout the year, it’s almost impossible to keep track of everything.
“Now we have one access point gathering and feeding new requests and information to the whole company.”
Plans are now also in place to launch ‘MeetingShop’, an umbrella portal which will enable customers and agents to do a ‘live’ search for conference facilities nationwide, initially at 500 venues.
By Bev Fearis
