Penn State Hospitality Services Forms Strategic Alliance with UniFocus

Penn State Hospitality Services has kicked off a partnership with UniFocus for the implementation of MEETINGScope for the Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel and the Nittany Lion Inn; both owned by Penn State University and managed by its Hospitality Services Department.

MEETINGScope is the most advanced web-based system available for gathering critical feedback in real-time throughout the entire event process. This timely process helps to ensure the highest possible level of meeting planner satisfaction and thereby intent to recommend and return. With a focus on the partnering nature of the relationship of meeting planners to hotels, MEETINGScope supports growing this bond and therefore the hotel's revenue.

The real-time nature of UniFocus' MEETINGScope provides an important competitive differentiator by enabling quicker response to service issues and shorter recovery time. As you can identify critical issues that occur at any point in the event timeline, on-going feedback ensures a consistently positive experience at every touch point.

"We've had a tremendous response from our customer base utilizing UniFocus' MEETINGScope and have gleaned a lot of really useful information that helps us identify trends and make improvements," says Jim Purdum, general manager for Penn State's on-campus hotels. "Previously we had a difficult time getting meeting planners to complete the surveys; the old system never got a response rate high enough to generate any valid results. With UniFocus we get timely accurate data that allows for objective service evaluation."

Enhancing meeting planner relationships
UniFocus' MEETINGScope system streamlines communications, analyzes every aspect of critical service delivery factors, and provides historical data capture for trending and strategic planning—all of which combine to enhance relationships with meeting planners. Survey results can also be related to guest and employee feedback then analytically compared with mystery evaluations to produce a whole new level of actionable intelligence.

"Too often with traditional survey feedback, managers feel as though they are getting a report card rather than real information about service performance and how they can better manage the service experience from initial contact to event delivery," continues Purdum. "Moreover, today meeting planners are under the gun to cut costs which adds pressure on meeting facilities and hotels to discount rates and even jettison whatever standard survey system is in place. Meeting planners need to spend wisely and will patronize hotels that really pay attention to their needs and MEETINGScope helps our organization compete effectively in this very tight market and to recover in a timely manner if something isn't just right."

There is no system comparable to MEETINGScope that can match the right staff with the right meetings by utilizing a database of more than 100,000 meeting-planner profile types. Coupled with rich-media online sales tools, hotel operators can also gain more traction in booking events business as a vital source of revenue.

Among the benefits MEETINGScope offers are:

• Web-based survey technology and e-mail correspondence—essential to reaching meeting planners—that delivers higher response rates and maintains statistical reliability.
• Immediate "Hot Button" reports showing important service concerns, even in first-time-business situations.
• A database of more than 100,000 meeting-planner profiles.
• Benchmarking, team performance and results reporting across each department that are delivered in an online system in real-time.
• An integrated Action Plan Tracking System that ties directly to Meeting Planner Response System to ensure that proper service recovery occurs.
• MEETINGScope training and support provided by a UniFocus team that has decades of hospitality and meeting sales experience.