For Immediate Release
January 26, 2010
The destination considers the entire business community in its licensing of Passkey
Waltham, MA —
The Palm Beach County Convention and Visitors Bureau (PBC CVB) generates $2.6 billion in annual revenue for Palm Beach County’s economy. This year, the PBC CVB has challenged itself to double its contribution to the community by 2020 with strategies that ensure Palm Beach County is optimally positioned to grow its reputation as a premiere meetings destination.
One key strategic element is the decision to license Passkey’s GroupMax online group reservations system. The GroupMax system not only ensures that meeting planners and hotels have the best possible booking technology for citywide events, but also introduces new revenue opportunities to the entire Palm Beach County business community.
Passkey has always served the housing needs of large metro area CVBs and today, CVBs of any size can now provide a housing solution. According to Steve Crist, Vice President of Destination Sales,
“With Passkey, the Palm Beach County CVB closes the service gap – our destination now provides the sophisticated group reservation management capabilities demanded by our planners. In addition, we can leverage GroupMax’s new tools to provide our members with marketing capabilities that were never available to us before.”
The success of GroupMax comes from the technology investments the company made over the last year. Starting in late 2008, Passkey began deploying a set of revenue and service-focused feature sets. Greg Pesik, President and CEO of Passkey comments,
“You can talk all you want about efficiencies during an economic crises – but in the middle of one, you’ve cut all there is – Passkey needed to help its clients get top-line growth. That’s precisely what the GroupMax system is designed to do.”
GroupMax includes an imbedded email marketing tool known as GroupCampaigns that now allows the PBC CVB to work with planners to design event or attendee-specific marketing messages to bolster attendance, reduce book-arounds or communicate promotions.
“In terms of marketing to event attendees and effectively communicating what Palm Beach County has to offer, Passkey is a real game changer,” says Shirley Talbert, Vice President of Marketing and Communications.
Finally, Passkey’s Event Dashboards allow meeting planners to track all essential event information from a personalized web page or on their mobile device. The result is a proactive approach to block management and minimizing a planner’s attrition exposure.
The PBC CVB already has an intimate knowledge of venues within the county - the Visitors’ Bureau accommodates events up to 10,000 individuals and recently completed a 350,000 sq. ft. addition to the Palm Beach County Convention Center. Passkey will continue to give the destination competitive advantage by providing a platform to link hotel reservations with event registrations and provide crucial decision making event data.