Wedding Pro CEO | Building Profitable Wedding Businesses

302. Unlock Passive Revenue with Engine Room Blocks w/Renee Epstein-Ross

• Brandee Gaar and Renee Epstein-Ross • Season 6

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Adding passive income to your wedding business is easier than you think. 

In this episode, you’ll learn how to simplify a major pain point for your couples while creating a new revenue stream that runs in the background of your business.

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Another favorite book of mine: Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell 

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Brandee Gaar:

We always talk about adding revenue streams to your business, but doing it is a whole other thing. In this episode, I'm talking to Renee Epstein Ross from Engine, and we're talking all about a passive revenue stream that is coming into the wedding industry to help you not only, get room blocks for your couples and help them to be able to book rooms for their destination weddings, but also a way for you to make commission on those referrals. This is a truly passive revenue stream that you can add to your business that also helps your couple with a huge problem that they have. So even if you are not a planner, this is a great thing that you can add into your business workflow as a dj, a photographer, florist venue, to be able to help your couples book those room blocks, that can be so tricky to do. And if you are a full service planner listening to this episode, trust me, you're gonna wanna tune in listen to how you can leverage this to not only make your job easier, but also to add a few dollars into your pocket each year. Renee, I am so excited to have you on the podcast so we can dig into all things Engine and I really am thrilled for our listeners to get to understand a little bit more about how valuable this tool is.'cause I'm not gonna lie, I feel like I've. Been pitched many a software that says that it will do what you said that you would do. So I was intrigued to get the walkthrough, and then when you showed me everything, I was just like, okay, we need to talk about this on the podcast because my listeners need to see this. The wedding industry needs to see it. So thanks for coming on and talking to us all about it.

Renee Epstein-Ross:

Oh, you're so kind. Thank you so much. I'm really excited to chat with you, Our services are really helping a lot of wedding industry professionals and really excited to share this with your audience.

Brandee Gaar:

Yeah, this is gonna be good. Okay, so before we show everybody, so if you're listening on the podcast, we are showing a walkthrough of Engine on our YouTube channel. So if you're listening on the podcast and you wanna see it, hop over to our YouTube channel so that you can see everything that we're talking about. But before we do that, Renee, can you kind of tell us what Engine is and kind of how. It came to be.

Renee Epstein-Ross:

Yeah, I would love to. we're an accommodation platform. we have over 750,000 properties across the globe. our rates are really competitive, so four groups for room blocks. They're up to 20% cheaper, than reaching out to a property directly, or leveraging a different service. we really built this out because we saw a big gap, in the industry. The room block accommodation process is kind of. Just a really antiquated one. a lot of times planners are calling the front desk. The front desk has to transfer them to the group sales department. especially ever since the pandemic, the group sales team is never really at their desk. and so you're waiting days and weeks to hear back from someone. and it can be a really tricky process, both for planners and couples. There are terms like attrition and cutoff dates. Hopefully for a lot of folks, this is their first and only time that they're getting married and have to deal with this process. and dealing with it alone can be really daunting. So we've created this streamlined service where we are a white glove. Service will help both planners and couples with everything from request for proposals, negotiating things like attrition, getting different room blocks for different budgetary needs, all the way through checkout. So if there's ever a problem with in incidentals or anything of that nature, our team is here to help support. And again, at the end of the day, we just wanna make both planners and couples lives a little bit easier.

Brandee Gaar:

Yeah. one of the things I thought was so intriguing about your service in particular is that while. Planners are typically the ones dealing with room blocks. A lot of vendors, right, have clients who either don't have a planner or the planner maybe is just day of. And so they can also refer this service and make a commission off of that referral, right, so that the couples can work directly with engine to create their room blocks. And by referring them, they can make a small commission on that.

Renee Epstein-Ross:

Yep, a hundred percent. so we have two flows, exactly what you're articulating. one flow a, maybe like your full service planner where you can go onto our platform, submit requests, and like I said, white, glove service, our team will help. Reaching out to the properties and streamlining responses for you, which is amazing. But also for maybe more like partial day of month of coordination services, we can spin up co-branded landing pages. So they look like they're an extension of, uh, the planner services. They can add it to their site directly, they can email it out to clients. but then couples can go through the process themselves. They can submit requests. Same level of service, same person on the other side of things. so we're really just trying to help all of these different facets of the industry.

Brandee Gaar:

when you say a co-branded landing page, what, what would that look like exactly? Or how does that work?

Renee Epstein-Ross:

Yeah, so we, request a few things from our planners to customize it for their business. we'll ask for a high res logo, on a vector file. We can pull in hex colors from planner's websites to make sure it feels really on brand. and then it'll be wedding specific. So we'll have wedding specific imagery, and we'll be able to kind of create all that pretty quickly. once a logo is sent roughly within one week, we're able to ship a landing page and get it back to planners.

Brandee Gaar:

Great. And so then they can just keep that as a page on their site. Either live in the toolbar or hidden page just specifically for clients. if you guys wanna see what this looks like, head to the link in the show notes and you can see exactly how we've co-branded the Wedding Pro CEO page. that's actually where you can also input your information so that you can create an account with Engine and their team can go ahead and get you set up with your own co-branded landing page and revenue stream. To be able to get this out to your couples. Okay, so Renee, you're gonna walk us through Engine on the backend. Right? I'm excited for everybody to kind of see that and what's interesting about it is those two different flows, and as a planner myself, obviously I love that we can go in as a full service planner and do it for our clients and have your help managing it. I know that there are. So many students inside our program that are planners that are like, I hate room blocks. They're the death of me. so this is a really simple tool, but then also it's such a great resource for couples, it really works both ways. So let's dig into, taking a look at what it looks like behind the scenes.

Renee Epstein-Ross:

Okay. Amazing. So this is what the platform looks like once you have access. and for room blocks in general. Hospitality industry term is typically, nine rooms or more. If you ever have a need for nine rooms or less, maybe it's personal travel, maybe you're coordinating travel, for a photographer or a florist who needs to stay somewhere overnight. You'll leverage this booking tab. We have lodging flights and rental cars. pretty intuitive. You'll enter in city address, venue, the dates that you need, accommodations, and then the guests. And like I said, pretty streamlined there. Lion's share of what our planners are leveraging is this groups tab. you can, situate this and, and organize it to your needs. So you'll have all the different trip names, dates, you'll be able to see all the different properties, locations, room counts, and then different statuses. I know oftentimes it can be really daunting if you have all these different events. Trying to remember all of the specifics. So we put everything into a nice little platform for you to be able to view them one by one. But to start a trip, you'll click on start. Uh, you can enter in city hotel, zip code, venue. for purposes of this, I'll just enter in the zip code in Denver. Um,

Brandee Gaar:

know really quick, I'm gonna ask you a question. So as a planner, if we know that we have a wedding in a certain zip code and we want the hotel to obviously be nearby, we can just enter in the zip code. But if we want a very specific hotel and we still don't want to have to go through the red tape of calling the hotel directly, we can just go ahead and give you that specific hotel right here.

Renee Epstein-Ross:

You can include it here if the wedding is at a venue. You could also include that. Um, yeah, so you could enter in any of that info. and then a little bit later on we'll also have certain questions about distance and how far, the couple is comfortable being away from the venue. So,

Brandee Gaar:

Okay.

Renee Epstein-Ross:

So I'll put in Denver. Let's look nice. Spring wedding. maybe we wanna do Friday to Monday. It's gonna be a destination trip. We'll say it's Renee wedding. 4, 10, 26, let's go. I know one of the first questions couples always ask is, how much is this gonna cost? Uh, and that depends a lot on seasonality and if there's any events going on. so we're pulling in real time aggregated proprietary data to help level set expectations for different tiers of properties. Uh,

Brandee Gaar:

But the, the software itself using engine doesn't cost the couple anything. Right.

Renee Epstein-Ross:

is correct. There is no fees to leverage our service, either for the planner or for the couple. Yeah,

Brandee Gaar:

Very cool.

Renee Epstein-Ross:

we'll say it's an event. Maybe we need 10 singles, 10 doubles. We wanna look at a. Bridal suite. Suite, we can also include that. So we're letting you select the room type, which is really awesome. what's also really cool if for whatever reason, you know, you have people coming in late, leaving early, they won't be there for the goodbye brunch. You can also communicate all that from the jump. So your, couple is only paying for whatever roommates are actually being used. We

Brandee Gaar:

Super helpful.

Renee Epstein-Ross:

continue. Uh, we always auto default to zero to five miles from whatever address you input. Uh, you can always blow this out if you wanna be a little bit farther away. See what your options are. you can filter by star rating, so if you only want three stars are up. If there's a specific property you have in mind, I know the Halcyon really great, you can, uh, select it that way you can filter for amenities as well. So if you want, uh, to ensure parking is included or meeting room space, um, or maybe even breakfast. like I said, you can click on a property and do a little bit of a deeper dive So you'll be able to view pictures, make sure it looks okay, amenities, check in, checkout time about the property, a blurb about the property, as well as reviews that we're pulling in from a variety of different sources so you can feel confident in your decision making process. Um.

Brandee Gaar:

Okay.

Renee Epstein-Ross:

we'll select a few properties for this proposal. We'll click on continue. a few more questions about amenities. Just trying to get a better understanding of what the couple needs. Um, so if we need to have breakfast, like I said, parking. Meeting space can be a big one. So if you're helping to coordinate like maybe a rehearsal dinner or an after party. So we'll ask for budget meeting attendees, dates and times. You need the space. if you need av, if you need f and b. Any other notes, um, in this other column? Anything else pertaining to amenities? so I know amenity bags, being out at checking can be a big one. You can include that. The couple would like to do that, and we'll do our best to negotiate that with the property on your behalf. We'll click continue a few more questions. If for whatever reason the properties selected, don't abide by the answers. here we'll offer up a few additional properties that do so. Maybe I want two 50 for my maximum nightly rate. I wanna be no farther than two miles from the destination. I'm a big Hilton gal. I'd like to stay at a Hilton property. it's important to me that its four stars are up and, you know, nightly rate is the most important to me. And then in this anything else column, that's where I always like to say like, whatever. Additional context you have about this room block, I would include it. and that's because each event will have one dedicated group sales manager who is, uh, helping to oversee and reach out to all of these properties on your behalf. So the more information you. Provide to them from the jump, the better and, more qualified properties we are able to get for you. so here I would include things like, Hey, I would strongly prefer a courtesy block. I will need two different. booking links for two different budgetary reasons. So maybe there is a luxury property, maybe there is a middle of the line property. I think that's one of the great benefits of leveraging us, that we have all of these different properties for all of these different budgetary restrictions. so including all of that, again, will just help ensure a seamless process. The group sales manager is also here and they'll reach out after a request has been submitted. So they're more than happy to hop onto a call or text or whatever your preferred mode of communication is, to ensure they have all that info. So

Brandee Gaar:

think that that was one of the things that intrigued me the most about this because it's not just like. And Expedia. I mean obviously Expedia doesn't do like room, room blocks, but it's not just something you're punching a bunch of numbers into and then seeing what it kicks back. It is that. But then you also have dedicated sales managers who understand this landscape, and it is a really challenging landscape to navigate if you haven't been in the hotel business before having come from that market. Room. I love room blocks 'cause I understand hotel language, but that's because I came from hotels. a lot of wedding pros don't. And so really navigating this, there's so much to it. So I love that you have these dedicated specialists who understand it and who are really working with you to get the best, not just the best deal, but the overall best package for your clients.

Renee Epstein-Ross:

A hundred percent. And they're also here to help educate too.

Brandee Gaar:

Right.

Renee Epstein-Ross:

Um, so I mean, if for whatever reason there is a term that someone's not. Familiar with like attrition and more than happy to kind of review what that is. I've seen group sales managers and these specialists like jump to communicate that to planners and couples. So it's not even like they have to wait to be like, wait, I'm not familiar with this term. So they're extremely proactive. Ensuring this is the best possible experience.

Brandee Gaar:

And I think attrition is, is actually such a great example because again, having that as my background, like my first big girl job was in a hotel, so attrition was a, a term I used all the time. I understood it when I became a planner. I would scan the contract immediately for attrition. It's something we negotiate often, but I didn't realize until I, I started bringing on a team that that's just not a common term in the wedding industry. And so it's, it's really something that can. Really sour. Um, a wedding quickly when your client doesn't realize they've signed a contract that includes attrition. And honestly, that doesn't usually come into play till about 30 days before the event. And if no one's watching it or no one knew it was there, you could be on the hook for. Thousands and thousands of dollars of rooms if you're not paying attention to it. So when you and I chatted and you said, you know, these dedicated sales managers, that's something that they'll typically red flag is like, Hey, it's not that we don't want you to sign it.'cause a lot of contracts have attrition in it. It's okay, but you need to be aware of it. Like you can't just go book a hundred rooms and be like, well, if we don't book 'em all, it's fine. You know,

Renee Epstein-Ross:

Yeah. exactly to your point, like we, the, there's so many emotions involved in the wedding planning process in general. and I know planners are putting their reputation and names on the line and like any small fault in the process can leave a couple with a bad taste in their mouth. And we're hyper aware of that. And again, we never want anyone to. Be signing something where they don't fully understand the stipulations of the contract, so.

Brandee Gaar:

Good. Okay.

Renee Epstein-Ross:

just a few more questions for this process. So we're gathering an email address, phone number, and then two payment options that are relevant here. So credit card payment to engine, that is gonna be one credit card for all rooms. I'll be super honest. In the wedding space, this isn't leveraged that frequently. Perhaps a family wants to spend or pay for a certain amount of rooms for X amount of folks, then you would leverage this option. What is utilized most frequently is individuals pay at hotels. So as guests are checking in, they're all swiping their credit cards. Uh,

Brandee Gaar:

That makes the most sense.

Renee Epstein-Ross:

Totally, we would click submit. I think one of the qualms about this process, it's super time consuming. You can be waiting days, weeks to hear back from properties, and we just streamline that process. So on average, you will get a response and a proposal within two to three business days, if not sooner. It's gonna depend on the property, but more often than not, I'm seeing two to three business days. You'll get an email notification, Hey, your proposal's ready for review. You'll come into the dashboard, and then you'll be able to view, your proposal and you'll be able to see everything side by side, which is pretty cool, and what they are and are not able to accomplish. Um, this is just a demo account. You can ignore that it's. The same property, but you get a feel for what it would look like. So this one looks like it's the most economical. We can view it and then run through Line item by line item what this property accomplishes. So, 17 rooms check. We asked for a three star hotel. Doesn't look like we hit the mark there. Maybe it's two stars. We asked for $175 a night or less. We were able to undercut that quite a bit. It's within nine miles, we got parking, but, you know, there's no pool, policies and dates. this would articulate attrition. and what it means. There's some helper texts there. But again, our team is always here to help communicate what that looks like. Meeting space info. And then just more about the property. if you review this, you review it with your couple and you're like, oh my God, amazing. This looks great. Next step is you would click accept. we would then get a. From the property, even if it is a courtesy block, it's just our standard procedure. We would ask the planner, Hey, who does this contract go to? Does it go to you? Does it go to the couple? Does it go to you before we send it to the couple? again, we wanna be very mindful of the planner's practices and not interrupt their workflow,

Brandee Gaar:

Can I just pause you there for a second because I think. Every planner that's listening to this right now, like our hearts just like sent little stars out because that is one of the hardest things to get vendors to understand is, hey, we have put our names on this and we need to review it before it goes to our clients, especially if we're full service. Because if there's something in it that's wrong, that's on us. And so I love that you not only thought about that, but that you, you guys have implemented that as an option. So for all the planners. That's a huge deal for us, and it, it kind of was like, it, it won me over. I'm not gonna lie, when you were showing me all of this.

Renee Epstein-Ross:

amazing. Yeah. Again, at the end of the day, like. I was, saying earlier, a hundred percent understand that this is an extension of your services, your reputation, your name, and we want to, figure out how we can best service both yourself and the couple for the best possible experience. but yeah, once the contract has been signed, next step is we would. Do a warm handshake with the property. we would make an introduction then the property would generate a booking link that the couple can then add to their wedding website. if for whatever reason, the couple communicates to the planner a month out, like, Hey, we've exceeded our, uh, room count, can we reach out and get more rooms added? Can always be a conversation with the group sales manager to make any updates. We can reach out to the property and and see what we can do. So it's still an open line of communication.

Brandee Gaar:

Yes. I love that. Okay. what else should we know about using Engine? I know that there's a commission structure, right? So can we touch on that for just a second? I guess as a planner, let's touch on it as a planner and then also like a full service planner, and then also if we're just referring our couples there. So that would be, um, you know, photographers, DJs, florist, really. that don't have rooms obviously. how can both of these different people understand that commission structure?

Renee Epstein-Ross:

Yeah, so and even just to answer your question earlier, like I know we were talking a lot about planners, but we have wedding industry professionals of all kinds leveraging our platform. We have DJs and bands, leveraging us to help, with accommodations for staff and just streamlining the process and being able to see all invoices in one place. I know I didn't really go over that, but. they really love utilizing us for that. Uh, same thing with photographers and, and venues, especially venues without lodging on site. When you think about the funnel and the wedding journey, like venue, then room block is what I've Always learned. so definitely think we can help support them there. and then from the commission perspective, Our rates are still really competitive. Uh, but we take a chunk and we send it back to our partners as a thank you to help for helping us to fill room nights.

Brandee Gaar:

and honestly, right now what's happening is a lot of planners are doing these room blocks and getting nothing from it, and it's so much work, so this is a great way to make it simpler on yourself and also add a little bit of a revenue stream into your business. But for all the other pros who are listening, I know we have so many different kinds of pros that are in our listenership. This is a really easy way to solve a problem for your couples. I know so many vendors who are like, ah, my couple, you know, they're from outta state and they don't have a planner yet, they need rooms. And so this is just a really easy way to put this as part of your workflow. Like, hey, if you need rooms, use engine we love them. And have that landing page and be able to make a small revenue stream off of it, but also solve a problem for your clients. So I really appreciate this. I think it's amazing. Is there anything else that our listeners should know about Engine?

Renee Epstein-Ross:

Yeah, I think I kind of touched upon it, but I'd love to really just drive home on our rates and being super competitive. I. Think our ability to get such competitive rates, especially for a lot of these like destination properties, really helps to ensure the best possible experience for your guests as well. and we have accommodations for all different types of budgets, right? So we have the ultra luxury properties, we have your extended stays, middle of the road properties, as well as budget. But yeah, I mean, again, to your point, we're taking one of these really, burdensome tasks off of planners plates. We are helping the couple, secure the best possible rates, also the best possible experience, listening really to what their needs are, So. I think it's kind of a win, win, win from all angles.

Brandee Gaar:

I love this. Renee, tell us where they can learn more about Engine.

Renee Epstein-Ross:

Yeah. we have a form that we have created, just for your audience, It's a few short questions. Once they submit it within 24 business hours, someone from our team will be in touch, to get them situated with an account.

Brandee Gaar:

We'll put that link in the show notes below you guys. So click that link. this is a great way to make a small revenue stream for your business that's super, super passive for you. So I love this. I love that you're solving a problem, Renee, for the wedding industry and honestly for several industries. thank you so much for being here. I'm. Excited to see everybody learn and use Engine even more.

Renee Epstein-Ross:

Thanks, Brandee

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Brandee Gaar

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Renee Epstein-Ross

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