Tackling One of the Last Frontiers in Hotel Automation….Meetings & Conference Rooms

Main Photo: The Courtyard by Marriott South, one of the hotels that has Wizme

Date: May 2021

Location: UK initially

Name: Wizme

Who They: Wizme, founded by ex-IHG Nour Mouakke, founder & CEO….who says his system was created from the challenging experiences of managing meetings and events – countless calls and paper/email trails, lack of transparency and control, and very little automation.

Alongside this experience, is a belief in the power of human relationships, and building connections between people and technology, to make the meetings and events ecosystem work like magic. And so Wizme was born.

Their mission is to change how meetings and events are managed with their intelligent booking and management platform, to improve productivity, performance and profitability for everyone, and to be technology partner of choice, for hotels and venues. ” Wizme’s greatest strength is the passion, expertise and energy that our team has to create amazing solutions to solve real customer problems quickly. Establishing open and honest collaborative relationships so that we can deliver quality whilst developing our people, having fun and really enjoying what we do – that’s how the magic comes alive! ” says Nour Mouakke

What Does It Do: We, at THPT, have always been amazed how poorly the meetings and group accommodation market has been served in terms of technology solutions. The dominant players Oracle and Delphi have bolted on sales and catering packages to the core bedroom management products, with little focus on meetings yield and diary management sophistication, with little thought to the venue office communication process between venue operations and the customer (private, corporate direct or third party agents). The end result – poor customer experiences and venue teams burdened with administration and little time to spend on converting profitable business.

So, we were interested to see a relatively new player coming to market with just that focus a solution in that venue management space – Wizme.

In essence this technology solution works for both big branded chains and small independent venues alike. If you have got meetings space you want to better manage, Wizme is worth looking at. Wizme’s mantra is better decision- making insight, automation that enables the conference office teams to focus on selling and converting rather than bogged down in admin, smarter and quicker customer proposal responses, automated options management, and some smart touches that clearly points to the fact that the team understand the pain points of venue owners

If you are a subscriber of the likes of Delphi and Oracle to manage your meeting diary then this will sit alongside that, powering all the smart things that you just don’t get today, all delivered by Wizme’s Enquiry Wizard solution which:

1. Intelligently prompts the capture of all customers requirements first time, so you get a handle on what’s good business and not.
2. Creates accurate, powerful and user-friendly business proposals quickly to your customers – to optimise conversion consistently.
3. Streamlines, in an automated and audited communication engine, the inevitable back and forth communication in the meeting enquiry, contracting and modifications process that inevitably tie up conference office teams – they can now focus on the real job of converting the high yield business opportunities.
4. Delivers some really savvy features and functions designed to sell your properties services and optimise your share of the customer’s purse. We forget that the upsell and customer prompts to add items to their event planning often get left behind, as a result of your team’s knowledge inconsistencies or time.

5. Powerful data insight – allowing you to get the most your “space” assets ensuring they meet the needs of the market demand and understand how you can better optimise your revenue. The sort of data that allows you to drive performance.
6. On the short term horizon will be delivering an intuitive and extremely well thought-out user experience Wizme widget for online meeting requests.

If you are a smaller venue and currently working on basic diary management processes then the Wizme solution can extend out to deliver a great diary and pricing management system, alongside the Enquiry Wizard. Below are just a few of the comprehensive features:

1. A dynamic diary management function – shows what’s available and the target price, giving clear guidance to the conference office of what sell price they should be pitching for, based on lead time, size of event or profile of business (residential, daily delegate or room hire)
2. Pricing packages (including specific customer negotiated prices) set to optimise yields (day of week/meeting event profile).
3. Internal communications tool delivering the right information for all venue departments – finance, catering, sales, front of house etc

Set up and Implementations processes are very simple and the Wizme system is making some headway now with new sign-ups of venue brands and representation companies, giving a sense of validation that its hitting the mark and addressing the known challenges in the venue management sector.

THPT Comment: Having (Dev Anand) been involved with a similar start-up in 2009, in the USA (Worktopia) we can confirm first-hand that getting online automation in the meeting space is not easy! mainly because the 10,000 or more meeting venues in the UK alone, don’t have their inventory sitting on a computer in the first place…so we wish Wizme the best of luck and with the years of research they have put into their system, they deserve to win!

First Seen: An interview with Wizme founder Nour Mouakke.

The Hotel Property Team (THPT) is a small group of highly experienced business professionals. Between us, we provide a range of skills and experience which is directly relevant to those involved in the hotel property market.

For more information – Visit www.thpt.co.uk or email info@rrh.hmf.mybluehost.me.