A mystery shopping experiment commissioned by InterContinental Hotel Group (IHG) has revealed Dubai hotels take up to three days to respond to clients trying to make a MICE booking.
The survey, conducted by an independent UK-based firm revealed that of the 15 hotels surveyed, none managed to follow up with the client once details had been sent.
“This is very bad behaviour in a sales market,” said Christian Pertl, director of sales and marketing, InterContinental Dubai Festival City.
“MICE business is like a Formula One circuit – the fastest car is the winner,” he added.
Pertl added that IHG would be deploying an innovative approach to the meetings sales process at its InterContinental and Crowne Plaza hotels, and 4000m² convention centre, which are set to open in DFC later this year.
“From a regional point of view, most of the hotels are not where they should be in terms of response times, compared to the rest of the world. Companies in this region need to be easy to do business with, and you don’t find that a lot,” explained IHG’s area director of sales and marketing in the UAE and Qatar, Ricardo Manriquez.
“We’re trying to simplify the process of gathering data, putting together a proposal and forwarding it on to a client as much as possible, restructuring all our convention services to make it a one-stop shop, with one person as a point of contact.”
Training staff to deal with the MICE market will be key to IHG’s approach.
“Corporate meetings are completely different to incentives – it’s a different market, budget and need, and we will ensure we will have people that are specialised in each market,” said Pertl.
If other hotels fail to address the issue of slow enquiry response times, the result could be damaging to the reputation of the destination, according to Manriquez.
“Dubai’s competing with Hong Kong, Singapore, Paris, London and so on, and it takes the whole group of hotels within a destination to play the game right and to put the destination on the meetings and incentives map,” he said.
“Dubai is getting there – it’s ahead of most of the other markets within the GCC area, but we still have a way to go.”
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