Meetings Matter Chatter
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Meetings Matter Chatter
The Hotel Hunter: Inside the World of Sourcing
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In this engaging episode, we chat with Michelle Makin, a seasoned purchasing manager at BCD M&E, who sheds light on the intricate world of hotel sourcing. Michelle shares her firsthand experiences that illustrate the challenges and triumphs of the process. Listeners will be captivated as she recounts some chilling stories of potential disasters that could have occurred in her sourcing journey, but thanks to her expertise, turned into fortunate outcomes. Join us for a deep dive into the nuances of hotel procurement and learn how preparation and quick thinking can lead to incredible success!
Hi there. Welcome to Meetings Matter Chatter. My name is Jenna Baker, and I'm the Vice President of Account Management at BCD Meetings and Events, and I am your host. Today I am joined by Michelle Macon, who is a purchasing manager at BCD. Michelle services one of our financial services clients, and she negotiates and secures top destinations for her customers. And today she is going to tell you all of the secrets about how she does it. So, Michelle, welcome. Good morning, Jenna. Thank you for having me here today. I'm thrilled to hear all your tips, Michelle. Thank you for joining us. So we're gonna start really simple. You are a purchasing manager. What the heck does a purchasing manager do? Wonderful.
SPEAKER_01So I feel like purchasing managers or sourcing managers. That's that's often how we are referred to. We are really taxed to finding the needle in the haystack for our clients. We looked at their overall meeting requirements. What's important for them? Is it date? Is it location? What's going to make or break this meeting? Once we have those particulars in place, then we'll do a blanket source. Sometimes the sourcing is citywide, sometimes it's statewide, or sometimes it's worldwide to see who can accommodate this request. And then we go from there, eventually helping the client contract and make sure we secure the space that's correct for what they're looking for.
SPEAKER_00Okay. All right. So you're finding hotels all over the world in a lot of cases. How did you get into this line of work? Probably, I'm guessing a lot of people don't even know what a purchasing or a sourcing manager even is.
SPEAKER_01I often say that I end it with BCD and as a purchasing manager with a dash of luck and a lot of determination. I am ex hotel, like a lot of us in this industry. That's where I started. I worked with two major hotel brands, one in Florida and one here in Charlotte, where I'm based at now. Once working with the Charlotte Hotel, I started to engage and meet the BCD team. That's where I learned about BCD and what they did. The more I spoke with them, the more intrigued I was. I could they kept coming to the hotel, hosting the meetings. I spoke with the purchasing manager over the phone. Then I saw the planners on side. And just finally, after almost two years of investigating, learning, and thinking about the possible change from hotel world to the purchasing manager department, I figured I think this is what I want. And an opportunity came up and I just went for it. I started working in the Latin America department, helping the BCD team implement processes for our clients in Latin America and supporting smallest meetings in the United States as well, doing kind of both things. The purchasing process was clearly my favorite. The planning, it's very detail-oriented. I am big picture. I like to see things from the big angle. So the purchasing process clearly was calling me. And after, I believe, about two years in my original position, I jumped up to the purchasing department. And I've been here for seven years now.
SPEAKER_00Well, we are so glad that we got you. And the fact that you're bilingual is super, super helpful as well. I'm sure that when you were working with the Latin America hotels, I'm sure that made it a lot easier. Absolutely. All right. So now you specialize in high-end events. So these are really, you know, maybe large events or really high touch for a VIP audience. So when you're thinking about those types of meetings, how do you get the process going? How do you start things?
SPEAKER_01Our process is slow and it can be overwhelming at times. It it's definitely helpful to break it into steps, which I do. I am lucky enough to have a lot of history on these events. This large-scale events tend to happen on a yearly basis. So we can look back at history with the client and look and see, okay, where has this meeting taken place? What worked? What didn't work? That really helps us narrow what part of the country are we looking at. If we've hosted many times in the West Coast, let's go to the East Coast, let's change it a little bit for them. So that's kind of the first step to look at the history of the meeting and the wishes of the client as well. Because sometimes they want to stay where they've been. No, this area is working well for us and our attendees. Okay, let's go. So that's the first point. So once we get the specifics for the event and we feel like we have a good grasp of what is needed, then we'll do kind of a large-scale high-level sourcing. We look at our partners uh in those particular areas of the country with the amount of rooms and space that we need. And we source probably 20 to 30 properties, I would say. We take about three to four days to get those results back. And normally I'll say 20% of those who have availability and what we need. So I do present that to the client. Uh, and this is what really starts getting into the the nitty-gritty of it. We we looked and see, okay, of these properties, which ones are ideal, which ones have good location, good lift. That's very important. The dates that we want, because sometimes they'll respond and say we have availability, but it's not exactly the dates that you needed. Sometimes we can be flexible, sometimes we cannot. So we can look at that. We can look at, you know, when our timeline would be for the meeting. Are we getting into the meeting spaces the day of the meeting? Or we have two or three days to set up. So all those things are very important. And that then narrows the field again. Uh, and we get, let's say, top five. Uh, I think that's the good number for the type of meetings that we are hosting. And that's where it gets fun. This is where now I go to work, let's say, and I start speaking directly with those venues. I say, okay, you're in the top five, you've been shortlisted. What can you do to stand out? And that's where really the negotiations take place. Sometimes they're willing to work on their official rate or their starting bit. Sometimes they can't touch rate, but they'll offer something extra. So those are all the special negotiations that purchasing managers go through. Now, once we have that, then we prepare another kind of PowerPoint presentation to the client with these are our recommendations. This is what they can do. A lot of times they'll come back now with top two. Now we're officially, these are top two contenders. Obviously, we'll let everybody else know. We don't like to string anybody along. That goes back to relationship building. I'm very honest with our partners. So now we go back to those top two and say, okay, you're official top two here. Let's look at our package again. What have we offered? What can we do? You know, I sometimes play good cup, backup. You know, the other contenders offering this. Can you match it? That kind of stuff. It's just what we do behind the scenes for the client. And then hopefully from those two, the client will decide on one and we'll go to contract. Now that we go to contract, it's just facilitating that back and forth. You know, we need to adjust timing here, a little bit more rooms are needed, less rooms are needed. You know, we'll make sure that all our requirements are on that contract. We review the contract for the client, then we have the client review it as well. Hotel or venue partner reviews. And now once everybody agrees and we're on the same page, we just execute the contract and we're done with our process, pretty much.
SPEAKER_00Wow. That sounds like a pretty extensive process. How long does that take normally?
SPEAKER_01It really depends. But I would say that it normally takes anything from three to six months. And I know that sounds like a long time. If you're here listening to me, said a hotel's never gonna do that for me. They're never gonna hold that. I know it's tough. And that's where communication really plays an important part of the process. You know, there's hotels that will not. There's there's venues that are so in demand that they cannot host, uh hold your event for that long. And that's okay. As long as we're all in communication, you let your client know we're working with it, the space available, but we're not on hold. Or yes, they agreed, we're on hold until this day, and then we'll touch base again and see how much longer we can extend that hold. It really all depends on who you're working with, the communication, and quite frankly, how much time we have before the meeting. Sometimes I've had meetings that are within six months. So we cannot take three months to source. Then you know that that's a little bit of a faster pace. But on a regular sourcing of this level, I would say through six months is accurate.
SPEAKER_00Okay. When I started BCD, it was in 2008, and I did sourcing and our purchasing. And it was right after the financial crisis or right before maybe when I started. And so we could get hotels to hold forever, and we got great rates, and it was, you know, super easy. But I know that it's not the same anymore because the hotels are in such high demand that they probably have 10 other customers looking for the same space and dates. So you've it's difficult, like you said, to hold the space for as long as you're needing to hold it to let all those decision makers make their decisions. Correct. Yeah. Now, what about so you so okay, so it takes three to six months. I've had customers say, Why does this take so long? I could go on expedia.com and book it in, you know, a minute. Why does it take three months? Like I could just do it myself. What would you say if it to someone saying that to you?
SPEAKER_01I laugh because it is funny and it's something we do get. We do get it often. And again, depending on the complexity of the meeting, we will move faster. It's not to say that everything we do is going to take three to six months, have source meetings within a week and contract them in the second week and move on. Especially when I started doing smaller meetings on Latin America, that was a very fast turn. But it also obviously depends on the complexity. But talking about, you know, Expedia and Priceline and all those quick venues online, you really don't get a picture of the hotel. You don't get a whole picture. You don't know who's going to be hosting another event while you're on site. Maybe you have a competitor in the room next door. How uncomfortable would that be? You know, common spaces, the foyer. You know, who's meeting across the hallway from you? Uh, not even a whole across the hallway. Who's next door to you? I actually had a team that was meeting while somebody had band practice for um an event that we were having in the city. They were going to be, you know, doing a band for the sports event and someone wanted to host a meeting in the space next to it. I said, I'm happy to offer it to you, but you're gonna have a band next to you. Uh and those are the things that Expedia won't tell you. Um, you know, they won't say who's next to you. Um, so that's really important to me because I've been through it. I know I'm in in the hotel world, and the hotel will sell the rooms every single room. They'll they'll sell a closet if they can't. So, you know, it's definitely important to know who else is on property. More importantly, too, I would say what happens if you need to cancel? What happens if we are hit with a COVID situation? You know, we were able to mitigate a lot of cancellations for our client during COVID because of the policies and the contracts that we have in place. So those are all factors that you need to look at when you're doing a large-scale meeting or even a small meeting. You know, we would be able to help with factors that Expedia will not be able to.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, definitely. So when you're talking about your process, you were saying that, you know, you narrow it down to five hotels. Maybe you've got your top two at one point, and maybe you're in a situation where you've got your top one. Have you ever had a situation where you're negotiating a contract with a hotel, you're like you're right about to sign, you've done six months of work, and then suddenly it it falls through? Unfortunately, I have.
SPEAKER_01Probably my top five work worse experiences right there that you just mentioned. Um, it brings back memories. Um, I've probably been working with this particular venue for three months now. Everything was going great. They're a wonderful partner for us. It was for a three-meeting series of 900 attendees each series. So we had one in the fall, one in the spring, and one closer to winter. And we were drafting contracts. We were negotiating, we were reviewing back and forth between my client, um, the hotel. Everything was going very smooth. We were close to the final review when I get a call from my client, and I could tell from her voice it was not going to be a good call. She was jittery. I could see she was nervous, I could feel it. And um basically she said, you know, the they came back, the team came back from their final board meeting, and they said that the hotel is a little much, a little too resort for what we're looking to host. This is an educational symposium, and we don't want to give the wrong impression. I took a deep breath and I said, okay, so we're pulling this 100%. Yeah, I think we have to, and we're gonna have to resource. And at this point, I mean, both of those news are very difficult to take. A, I have to tell this partner that I've been working with that we're taking away a pretty big chunk of business that they've pretty much already had for next year, and then I realized I have to source the first series, it's in six months. So I have to find a hotel that would have 900 rooms, pretty much all their meeting space available for March. So it was very tough. I started working immediately on it. I could not find a hotel that had the three dates available. I found them hotels that had series one, series two, and series three, but not one house for all events as they wanted, which makes life a lot easier for the planning department. I see that. So unfortunately, I presented what I had, which were still wonderful properties, but it was different parts of the country, different um hotel brands. So send that over to my planner. Her back about two or three days. We're still trying to fight for the original location. I go, okay. But they're not sold on the resort style. Look, I said, okay, how many more days do you need? What's happening? Give me so it was about two weeks when I got the call back and said, We we've we're definitely gonna go with our original option. I said, okay, it's been about three weeks now since we told him we were pulling. I am not certain they're gonna have anything, but let me give a try. So called back our partners, you know, trying to, it's a very difficult conversation because you've already been through a huge letdown. So you don't want them to get extremely excited. Again, I'm ex-hotel, so I know what I'm telling their that I can provide. I mean, I've been in her shoes. I know that that's gonna make or break her quota for the probably the year, quite frankly. So told them, you know, let's let's take this step by step, but they do, they do want to come back. Please let me know what you had as far as availability and what you can do. Surprisingly, because I I frankly was not expecting this. They came back with all three dates were available. That was pure luck. There is, you know, that there is nothing else that can be said about that. Anyone else could have come in and taken the space, but thankfully it was there. But what was even more surprising, and it goes back to those partnerships that we've built, they were able to honor not only the rate that we had previously given us, but all the concessions that we had negotiated throughout the process, which was amazing, uh, a fantastic package for our client. The only caveat was we had to sign all three of this within a week and a half because the month was ending and they wanted to have it secure for month end. So I've never pushed contracts so hard in my life. It was it was an intense period of time, and my client traditionally works very slow. And I said, if you want it, we have to. And I've never seen them move faster either. It was impressive, and we got it done, and and it was great, but it was a very, very tough period of time for me.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I would say, wow, that's amazing. That is amazing. So it sounds like relationships are, I mean, if you didn't have the relationships with both your client and the hotel in that instance, you probably wouldn't have been successful.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. I think relationships are key. I've been doing this for about 15 years now. So, and the hotel industry, and it's a small community. We all know each other. We move the hotel, they move from hotel to hotel and they reach out. Hey, I'm here now. I'm here now. Don't forget about me. I moved here. You know, we see each other at conventions, we we we do keep in touch. I think it's very important. Um, you know, I can relate to them on a different level because I was in their shoes, so I know what I'm asking from them. And I think that makes them feel very at ease with me. I feel like they know that I understand. And I've also made sure that they understand what I need to do as well. Because obviously, we have our things that we need to accomplish on our end. So it's a really good balance, and I think that sense of trust has become very successful key for me. It's a very um, it's a big factor in what I do, uh, the relationships that I've built.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. So let's talk now about destinations. Sometimes destinations go through phases, right? Like everyone's talking about one city, you know, one particular year, and then that city is not popular anymore, and then they move on to another one. For you, obviously, you have to keep tabs on this. So, how do you keep track of kind of what's hot at the moment?
SPEAKER_01It is definitely a flow. Some are hot, some are not. It all depends. Someone can be hot today, not tomorrow. There's some cities that are always kind of on the Rollodex of, you know, hot cities. You have your usuals, you know, Orlando. I mean, the amount of activities and the amount of things you can do there are incredible. You have New York, you can't compare cultural experiences with New York, and I would say Miami falls on that bucket as well. Um, you have Chicago with the largest convention center in North America. So those are big cities that have always been on the map. Now you have smaller cities like Nashville, Austin, Charleston. Those are all very unique. They have their character, and and your client would love to investigate those cities if they could, if they fit in there. But as for us, for our team, we do something very unique. Uh, and I and I I truly enjoy it. We ask our client what their top cities are. You know, what do they see themselves going to from? And we do it locally, we do it in the United States. You know, where do you see yourself going next year, the next two or three years? Uh and they'll give us a list, and then we do what we call market visits. And it's basically we'll divide our team and we'll target about four each year of those markets that they want us to investigate. We'll divide our team and we go on site. We go to about 20 hotels a day, if we could. I mean, we we really is 15, 20 minutes on each hotel. We divide the team in partners, and a couple is in charge of different hotels. You'll take pictures, you'll get information. Um, we spend three days doing that. It's fantastic. I love it because you can put eyes on a property that you have never seen. You get to meet again back to relationships. You get to meet that sales manager, that hotel manager that you've talked to a million times, so never been able to see face to face. We communicate with the team. If I have a partner that's going to a destination that I have a meeting in, I'll send a note and say, please take a picture of this space. We're concerned about how big this is, the angle of this room. Um, so we can do all that. And then when we come back to our offices, we create what we call a lookbook. And it's basically a snapshot of that city and the hotels and venues that we visited. Has pictures, has information, uh, and then we come we provide that to our clients. So if you're hosting a meeting, let's say in Miami, we can look and see, okay, the team was there last year. What hotels did they visit? What venues did they see? Here's pictures, here's floor plans, here's availability. So we can kind of look and see what works for the meeting. And it's very, very helpful.
SPEAKER_00I love that because it's so important that, I mean, you are representing yourself as the expert, and I'm sure it's got to be challenging because it's like, wow, I'm trying to recommend a hotel in Miami, and I don't, I've never laid eyes on the hotel, as you said. And you obviously can't visit them all, but it's really smart to target, okay, well, these are the big cities that my client wants and and just do a blast of the cities. I think that's such a fantastic idea. So kudos to you and your team for for doing that. That's really, really awesome. Thank you. Now you had said, uh, you mentioned a couple of times that you came from hotels, obviously. And so that helps you in a lot of ways, especially from a negotiation standpoint, I would think, because you know the secrets of what the hotels can really give on and what they can't give on. So how do you approach negotiations?
SPEAKER_01It's it's honestly, I think that's the first key. I I reach out to a hotel and it's and I'm honest with them. I said, you know, that this is where we are. Ideally, this is where we want to be. You know, you have to obviously know are you talking to a hotel in peak season? We do our research, we look online, we see what they're offering. You know, your ex-hotel, you know that sometimes those we mentioned expedia, travelosity, those rates are non-refundable, none, you know, and and and we cannot match them as a group contract. But we can look and see you know, are they selling $100 less than what they're offering me? Maybe we can meet in the middle and they can reduce my rate by $50. So we have to do a little bit of research and then we reach out to the hotel. Again, just being honest, this is what we need. I also have history. I can look, we have reports. That says, you know, how many times that particular venue has been contracted and what rates were given. So I can look and obviously look and see, okay, this hotel was contracted last year. It's not exactly my meeting, but it was around the same time period. And they offer this rate. You know, why are you offering this one to me? And just lay it out just like that. And I see that you contracted with us last year. This is what was provided. Any way you can match it, if it's obviously if it's a better rate, um, you know, or or any any reason why not, because that's also true. You have to know why not. Maybe they'll tell you we're 90% sold out already those dates, and you're taking the last rooms in inventory. Well, you pass that along to your client as well. But you definitely have to be honest and share your expectations. You know, if you have a resort fee, we my client personally does not like to pay resort fee. I mean, who does? I mean, especially if you're going for a meeting. Well, who's gonna use an hour of jet ski when when you're really just going for a meeting and leaving? So we try to look at those. We try to look and see what's what's in the resort fee. Are you giving me free spa treatments? Well, we're not honestly gonna use that. I mean, so can we work around that? Can we can we reduce the res the items that you're providing in the resort fee or leave it all together? But also make it clear to your client on your end that they're not gonna have that free spa because it's that we're banking on that. You're you negotiated that off. So just make sure that you're honest with both sides and and and and clear expectations. I think that's very important. Set clear expectations from the get-go with your client of what you believe can be done so they're not blindsided. You know, I don't wanna I don't want a client to ever think that I'm gonna reduce a whole resort fee of $65, let's say, when in reality I might not. I might be able to break it for them a little bit, give them 50% off. But you never set that standard of okay, I'm gonna wave it for you before you speak to the hotel. But I think, yes, I think honestly and lay not what you want. Be upfront, be clear. And you can only ask and wait to see.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you're completely right. Sometimes you might just think it's the rate. And of course, we want to get the rate down, but there's so many hidden fees, like you said, resort fees, maybe there's food and beverage minimums, all sorts of stuff that you can negotiate. Absolutely. Okay. Now you mentioned that horror story where you were about to sign a contract and then you know your client pulled the plug, and luckily they they came back around to that hotel. What about situations? Have you ever had a situation where you've signed the contract and then the client came back to you and said, We need to get out of that?
SPEAKER_01My God, Jenna, you're killing me with all this. No, we we have, unfortunately. Again, like I said, you know, 10 years doing this, I've seen quite a few horror stories, and I have a few of my own. And this one's also one of mine. Um, we have booked a hotel again, nice, trusted partner of ours. When we signed, and I truly, truly believe this that when they signed, they did not have the dates that they were going to renovate. They didn't have dates. They might have had an expectation we were going to renovate at some time. Because again, I've been ex-hotel. I know that happens. I know that I have no question that she was not being truthful to us. I think they were being truthful to us. They did not have a set timeline for the renovation. Unfortunately for us, it became our same timeline. Uh the date that our client was going to be hosting their meeting, they were going to be on a full-on renovation of the entire hotel. It was not just self-goods renovation, it was an entire renovation. Of course, we learned about this and we panicked uh and we went into motion. We sent our planner on site. Planner calls me on site so that I could hear the the noises behind her. It was it was loud and I could definitely understand her panic in her voice. We created kind of like a punch list for the hotel of things because we didn't really want to cancel immediately. We tried to see, okay, we're we're talking about a large meeting here. Let's see if we can still host it. We had announced the meeting. Let's see if we can do some kind of damage control. So we created kind of like a punch list for the hotel and a wish list, if you wish. Uh, this is what we wanted to have done. This is what we would love to see happen. It went from just stuff goods around the lobby, the the rooms. And then, of course, we asked for it to be quiet while we were meeting, you know, to stop the renovation those days while we were there. Unfortunately, the hotel came back and understandably said, no, unfortunately, we can't do that. So it then became became uh let's see what we can do here. We looked in our national representatives, we the hotel brand, we had multiple conversations with the hotel, our executive team, the team in the hotel, the client. We talked back and forth, and we were able to successfully mitigate that entire cancellation. It was a large number because we were going to be there within six months. So we were able to cancel that. But now, again, as it often happens, I realized that yes, we can celebrate that big win, but now I have to find another home for this meeting that we have announced that we have on our calendars, and it is happening in six months. So, of course, they now wanted this. One was even challenging than the first one because they wanted the first the same timeline. We we want that exact same week because we have people that have that on their calendars and they're counting on that. So I had to source the same part of the country on that same week. I got one wonderful result, and it seemed to work out. We called, we made sure that everything worked out, we were able to get even a better rate on this resort, which ended up being a great match for us. They had just finished their renovation, so we went into a brand new renovated venue same week. I think we had to shift like arrival day, one one day. It was it was very minimal, the impact was very minimal, and we were able to do it successfully. So that was a big headache that turned into a wonderful experience at the end. And again, showcasing our partnership with our hotel vendors in the industry made a huge difference.
SPEAKER_00Wow, amazing. I have to say, I've heard that if you do something for 10 years, you can master it. And I know that you said you've been doing this for 10 years, and it sounds like you've definitely mastered it. So well done, Michelle. I have one more question for you. So, for those people listening to us right now, what would you say the most important things are that they should know when it comes to the purchasing process? Be constant with it.
SPEAKER_01Make sure you follow your own steps. I think it can get very overwhelming very quickly. So make sure you have your clear set of steps. I think everybody handles it slightly different. Overall, we have all the same processes, but we all have our own style. Make sure you're comfortable with your style. I think that's very important. If you're comfortable with what you're doing, it will showcase that to our partners, to your client, your level of comfort. It's very important. And be honest, keep everything honest, keep everything straight with what you're doing, because there is a lot of back and forth communication. Um, and you want to make sure that you follow through with your client. I think it's easy to miss steps, miss little things here and there. So I think create your own set of notes, create your timelines, create your Excel of what you're doing. I think that is very important, especially when you're sourcing three or four meetings at the same time. We sometimes joke, we're like, okay, which meeting are we talking about? Because it turns to, you know, that that can get confusing. So just try to stay as much uh organized in your own way as you can, what works for you, and enjoy the process. At the end of the day, build relationships, laugh about it, cry about it, because there will be intense moments. But I think laughing about it is very important and having people that you can share information with, a good team is very important, uh, and just have overall support for what you're doing is wonderful.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, very, very good. Michelle, thank you so much for sharing all your knowledge on this topic with us. I really learned a lot, as I often do, speaking with my guests. So thank you so much. Thank you for sharing your wisdom with us. Of course, you're welcome anytime. That's all the time we have for today. If you liked what you heard, please like and subscribe. I'm Jenna Baker, and this is Meetings Matter Chatter.