Frankly, it’s shocking that some hotels still use paper contracts when managing corporate or group agreements. In the post-pandemic world, we’re faced with the ‘new normal’ reality that there will be fewer face-to-face meetings going forward to limit viral spread (and save time) combined with the push to make everything more efficient via digitization.
That’s why our signature product, TransForm, allows for the full use of SignNow, a popular and secure electronic signature platform, so that your hotel can use digitized contracts that are wholly linked to an ecommerce payment portal for verifying any associated transactions.
Some of the other advantages to these e-signature programs over the paper-and-pen method are:
- Ability to quickly deliver electronic documents and update them on the fly so that the speed of negotiation increases and the deal never goes stale
- Timestamping and version-coding to reduce confusion and backtracking
- Use of a connected payment portal to configure multiple deposit dates and amounts so that groups can split the total over a longer timeframe and across different credit cards
- Sending out automated past due notifications to the group planner as a reminder as well as to the sales manager in order to keep track of trailing accounts receivable
- Make group negotiations contactless to minimize COVID-19 spread
- Eliminating paper which reduces printing costs and is better for the environment
All these benefits are critical as the events segment starts to reemerge. People want to gather but their budgets will be tighter as will their RFP lead times. You have to be as agile as possible when it comes to delivering a contract and pivoting to meet a group’s specific needs.
Especially with sales teams kept lean for the foreseeable future, if you can’t speedily turn around a revised draft with all their conditions met, then the business will likely go elsewhere. Don’t let the contract process become an obstacle; ask us how we can help.
