DoubleTree Cheltenham Elevates Their Event Space Management

The Story

The DoubleTree Cheltenham is a four-star hotel boasting 148 rooms, 10 versatile meeting spaces, and newly refurbished (June 2024) state-of- the-art health club facilities. Their location is easily accessible, making it an ideal choice for corporate businesses to gather for meetings.

In her experience, Nora Telleria Apraiz, Conference and Events Sales Manager has worked with a variety of systems for managing event space. Upon joining the staff at The DoubleTree Cheltenham, she understood the property would need an effective tool to help make the most of their substantial event space.

The SmartSpace revolution

Fortunately, Telleria Apraiz didn’t need to search for long, as the property had already invested in IDeaS SmartSpace. With new event management leadership in place to make the most of this powerful tool, The Doubletree Cheltenham was ready to revitalize their approach.

Through a series of calls with their dedicated IDeaS Success Manger, she gained insights into various aspects of the system: from navigating the main calendar to understanding conversions and the influence of competitors.

The DoubleTree Cheltenham property is the first in Telleria Apraiz’s experience to invest in SmartSpace, and it’s a resource she now considers a transformative addition to her meetings and events management toolkit.

Like many other hotel event sales managers, she’d grown accustomed to the need to grapple with multiple systems while manually inputting reports on conversion rates, competitor analysis, and pacing in order to do her job well.

“I had a lot of support from our Success Manager, and I know that she is always an email or call away for me to ask questions if I need it.”

Now, SmartSpace provides the efficiency of consolidating all relevant data. SmartSpace not only simplifies her tasks but also affords her invaluable time savings, empowering Telleria Apraiz to focus more keenly on delivering exceptional experiences for clients and optimizing event outcomes.

When first using SmartSpace, Telleria Apraiz immediately recognized how it would change her day-to-day workload. She recalls sharing, “I’m going to have so much time on my hands, I can stop using so many other reports that I don’t need anymore.”

Without SmartSpace, there was considerable room for human error, from entering incorrect data to missing vital information in the manual process. Now, with SmartSpace, Telleria Apraiz effortlessly retrieves reports from their sales and catering software, Delphi, directly into SmartSpace, ensuring no loss of information. Gone are the days of juggling multiple screens; SmartSpace streamlines the process, providing everything she needs in one centralized platform.

Now, SmartSpace is the first solution opened each morning and it remains open throughout the day for easy access. It supports collaboration and communication amongst the team and serves as a good tool for Telleria Apraiz and the Director of Sales to review and discuss critical bookings and call the agents to take action.

Precision insights and strategic decision-making

The DoubleTree Cheltenham’s sales team’s confidence in SmartSpace stems from its comprehensive performance insights. By precisely identifying gaps and leveraging data, SmartSpace enables targeted action, ensuring maximum returns.

Through the SmartSpace dashboards, Telleria Apraiz accesses conversion figures, comparing them with previous and subsequent months for insights. Additionally, she can analyze space utilization trends through intuitive charts, facilitating comparisons between the current and previous months. These visualizations empower the property to seize upon revenue- generating opportunities with precision and agility.

On one single dashboard, arrival and creation data alongside critical bookings can be accessed, all of which are pivotal metrics for driving business growth. While reviewing past performance is valuable, the focus remains on actionable insights to propel the business forward. The inquiry analytics and pace metrics provide a realistic snapshot of past performance and upcoming opportunities. This concise overview helps prioritize critical bookings for the next three months, guiding focused efforts towards growth.

Telleria Apraiz appreciates the ability to observe trends by comparing year-over-year data, as it allows her to discern the reasons behind a lag in conversion percentage, stating “I use SmartSpace the most to track my conversion and see how many inquiries we’ve taken each month, which is really good for us. We see the year-on-year trends and how many inquiries we took in the same month last year against this year.”

A revitalized approach to event sales management

The advantages of implementing SmartSpace are undeniable. Beyond time savings and improved data fidelity for reporting, a trend of growth is evident for DoubleTree Cheltenham event sales staff. This is notably exemplified by an increase in conversion rates observed in February 2024 compared to the preceding year.

Telleria Apraiz’s has advice to someone on the fence about SmartSpace: “How many spreadsheets do you have between your demand calendar, conversion, and utilization? What if, by simply uploading a report in two seconds, that data is completed for you?”

For the DoubleTree Cheltenham, this streamlining of meeting and event data reporting represents a sea change in how they approach—and capitalize—on the event demand in front of them.