Injecting Metaverse/AR/VR/AI into: MICE, Group booking, Venue booking, Sales & Catering

This is an all-inclusive POV from me, on clubbing MICE booking with a metaverse experience. Metaverse has been a flashy topic in recent years, however, my motion is to use this technology to solve real problems and not forcefully implement it for the sake of alluring the world. Welcome your thoughts, as always.

First thing first. What is MICE?

MICE stands for?Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, and Exhibitions. In simple terms, 'an event, which could be a conference, town hall, trade show or a gala wedding, attended by 400 to 2 lakhs attendees.

The Hannover?exhibition center?is?the largest convention center in the world & can accommodate more than?5,000 exhibitors and 210,000 attendees.

Hotels & MICE

The commonly related terms to MICE booking in the hotel landscape are group booking, venue booking, sales and catering, as most of the hotels have an attached convention center. So an event booking is mostly accompanied by determining 1) event factors like the logistics, seat orientations, and food menu and 2) booking hotel rooms for invitees, delegates & audience

MICE booking makes 'more money than hotel room booking

On a balance between the revenue from hotel rooms & its convention center, it's evident that MICE booking generates over 50% of a hotel’s revenue. Event attendee pays 17.5% more than leisure guests. MICE's Global value is projected to reach $1,780 billion in 2030

Current software used for MICE booking

There is powerful software in the market, that neatly does the job of booking venues that entails recording & pricing of event requirements like a dais, speaker, mic, projector, lights, chairs, welcome kit, food, and beverage. This software also orchestrates with hotel software (PMS) to perform group booking for the invitees.

Well-known Sales & Catering Software are Infor Sales & Catering event management software, Oracle OPERA Sales and Event Management and Amadeus Sales & Event Management

What hurts the MICE planners?

In MICE, there is this crucial role called 'Planner' and he/she could be an event organizer, booker, or personal assistant, who arranges, runs, and completes the event. Their core duty is to pick the right hotel’s conference room, logistics, seat orientations, and food menu and book hotel rooms for invitees

Despite the software in place, these planners report that event booking is a multi-step tedious process, time-consuming (10-60 days), that directly shrinks the attendee's experience and planner’s reputation

Unlike hotel room booking, even the big players, do not offer e2e booking flow for events on their website, instead take RFP, which takes 60+ days for closure, and half the time hotels don't respond back. Only the least percentage of total bookings happens via websites

How Metaverse can make the scene light?

Here is where metaverse can join hands with 'sales & catering' software and can furnish a metaverse view of the space, for planners to decide instantly (kicking out the physical visits) and also enhance the existing S&C systems with e2e booking flow (dethroning the RFP process), just like hotel room booking.

There could be field-level glitches in concluding the price and may not be possible to show up the booking price instantly, as there are multiple hotel departments involved (rooms, F&B, logistics). However, my POV is - this problem is solvable and the world is abruptly drifting on the road to 'automated decisions', with minimum to zero human touches.

Here is a simple 'metaverse - event booking' flow

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About the Author,

Yoknath?Rajan

Budding hospitality & product expert with a 'happy to learn' attitude.

Let me know your thoughts about this write-up. I understand there could be a better solution or something I missed, so please share your feedback on this article. Many Thanks :)