Radisson Hotel Group innovates meetings & group sales with cutting-edge technology

At this year’s IMEX in Frankfurt, Germany, Radisson Hotel Group announces new technological implementations that allow meeting and event planners to book the Group’s M&E venues via external MICE platforms making our offer widely available. This new distribution channel continues to position the Group as one of the industry’s leading digital pioneers and meeting and event organizers of choice, with award-winning offerings, tapping into the world of AI and integrated digital solutions. 

To expand its meeting and events offer beyond its own RadissonHotels.com website, Radisson Hotel Group has extended its long-term partnership with MeetingPackage, the European leading venue management SaaS solution. A seamless integration between EMMA, the Group’s unified technology platform, and the meeting and events booking software from MeetingPackage has been established, which enables Radisson Hotel Group to use MeetingPackage’s software as a channel management solution to connect to third-party vendors. This new offering is an intuitive and automated channel management solution for external organizers as well as third-party event vendors such as Venuedirectory to explore and book Radisson Hotel Group’s M&E venues.

Starting this month, Radisson Hotel Group is implementing this technology across the first set of UK hotels. The aim is to extend this roll-out across the Group’s EMEA portfolio, starting with key target MICE markets, including Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands. 

“We are delighted to see the partnership with MeetingPackage expand to the next level by opening the doors to our PMS solution EMMA. Building on our multi-year partnership, we are now extending our reach for instant book capabilities to other marketplaces and customers. With MeetingPackage as a channel manager, we are evolving our Groups plus Meeting and Events distribution strategy even further to be ‘the hotel chain easiest to do business with’,” says Angela Graun, VP Sales Operations & Meeting & Events. 

“We are thrilled to extend our partnership with Radisson Hotel Group to integrate MeetingPackage with EMMA, the Group’s innovative PMS solution. This partnership not only enhances our footprint with Radisson Hotel Group’s properties but also strengthens our position in the global marketplace. Through a single integration with MeetingPackage’s robust distribution APIs, distribution partners – including event marketplaces, TMCs, DMCs, and other industry providers searching for meeting rooms or group accommodation blocks – can now access an even larger network of properties. For hotels, MeetingPackage offers an unprecedented central hub to manage their distribution strategy for groups, meetings, and events, streamlining processes that were previously fragmented. We are excited to support Radisson Hotel Group in this transformation and look forward to a future of expansive growth and ongoing shared success,” says Joonas Ahola, CEO and Founder of MeetingPackage. 

At this year’s IMEX, Radisson Hotel Group also shows further leadership in integrating AI into fully immersive experiences and MICE booking process automation. As such, the Group and HeadBox also unveiled their plans to dive further into the world of AI-meeting and event solutions by implementing HeadBox 3D Studio, a tool which allows users to create immersive guided tours in minutes by combining 3D tours with AI-generated narrator videos. A key benefit of this technology is the precious amount of time event planners save by tapping into the Group’s existing immersive experiences combined with AI-technology, as well as the fact that each of these tours can be personalized and localized. 

Earlier this year, Radisson unveiled its pioneering Radisson Meetings Unbound value proposition and AI-powered Radisson Meetings Dream Machine. Radisson Meetings Unbound allows meeting and event planners to unleash their creativity and tap into the world of AI-technology to generate innovative ideas beyond conventional meetings and events boundaries, share event inspiration, and bring their imagination to life through future-thinking creations of dream event spaces. 

Radisson Hotel Group continues to be a leading pioneer in digital innovation. The Group’s award-winning and industry-first immersive experiences have played a pivotal role in its digital innovation and transformation journey. These immersive experiences are now available for 123+ hotels and continue to be a strong conversion booster for the Group’s meetings and events. These innovative immersive tours allow guests to enter hotels, meeting spaces, and hotel rooms virtually from their laptops, mobile devices, or VR headsets. With the Group’s Book It Easy tool, integrating immersive experiences meeting planners can easily search for their perfect event venue, explore the various meeting rooms and different set-ups, book directly, or send a request for proposal for that specific space. Event organizers at the hotels can show the possible set-ups and room configuration for each meeting and event space by using VR goggles or their smartphones. Immersive experiences have generated more qualified meeting and event inquiries (+35%) and more booking conversions (+12%). Radisson Hotel Group is steadily rolling-out this technology across its hotels worldwide.

Towards the end of 2023, Radisson Hotel Group was also the first international hotel group to fully implement hivr.ai’s ground-breaking technology, which allows the Group to manage the request for proposal process in a more automated manner. This technology enables hotels to improve response rates, save key time on manually processing requests, and allows a full demand capturing from different channels. Customers benefit from faster response times, instant responses on availability, and immediate rates for requests for different sizes and configurations of hotel rooms, meeting spaces, food and beverage options, and A/V equipment on platforms that are compatible. 

This year, Radisson Hotel Group will continue accelerating the roll-out of new digital enhancements, new booking management tools, rooming list options, advance payments, as well as group booking opportunities to solidify its position as one of the leading international meeting and event providers and as ‘the hotel chain easiest to do business with’.