LAST month’s merger of ACTIVE Network Business Solutions and Lanyon in the US means corporate travel and strategic meeting management programme (SMMP) managers will have access to next-generation tools that provide a full view of spend and eliminate multiple-point solutions to gather spend data on their hotel and event programmes.
ACTIVE, a leader in event marketing and Strategic Meetings Management technology, and Lanyon, a transient hotel programme technology leader will now operate under the Lanyon brand.
Lanyon’s clients include 875 corporate clients and 35 of the world’s largest intermediaries. In addition to data and analytics tools, it also provides hospitality and venue suppliers with access to thousands of corporate customers and associations searching for new properties and venues.
Kevin Iwamoto, vice president of industry strategy, Lanyon, said: “Next-generation tools that enable the consolidation of data are expected to become the norm as corporate buyers seek to capture and utilise business intelligence from their organisation’s overall meetings, events, transient business travel and hospitality spend.
“This consolidation will help corporate buyers and programme managers to become more savvy when it comes to supplier negotiations because it will provide them with a 360-degree view of their spend on everything from small meetings, to Strategic Meetings Management Programmes, to large and complex events,” he added, saying Lanyon is the first technology company in the forefront of this trend.
To capture, control and manage meetings, events and transient hotel spend, companies require a series of end-to-end processes that address hotel and venue sourcing, analytics, reporting, spend management and compliance.
Iwamoto noted most corporations today use multiple-point solutions to gather data on their hotel programme spend and use a separate set of point solutions for their meetings and event spend.
The merger enables clients to combine all data from the organisation’s travel and event spend into a single technology platform and reduce disparate data points where they have to manually gather data from, to create reports.
“This type of access to Big Data regarding spend is expected to lead to smarter supplier organisations, and enable corporations to create meetings, events, corporate transient travel and hospitality strategies that tie back to the strategy of the larger organisation,” Iwamoto noted.
