Travel is projected to add a record $11.1 trillion to the global economy in 2024. According to the Sports Business Journal, 63% of respondents in a 2023 travel study for the sports sector identified youth and amateur sporting events as the top generator of room nights. Economically, the sports travel industry had a direct economic impact of $52.2 billion in 2023, driven by over 200 million travelers and 73 million room nights, according to the Sports ETA State of the Industry Report.
This surge in travel, particularly for youth sports, highlights the growing need for an efficient hotel booking management system (or process), also known in the youth and amateur sports world as "event housing management."
Because volume is climbing and manual coordination does not scale with it. The busier the travel calendar gets, the more hotels, blocks, and attendees a housing company has to track at the same time.
As more Americans travel for youth and amateur sporting events (and other types of events as well), housing companies and event producers must identify ways to speed up and simplify their event housing management processes. Coordinating accommodations can quickly become overwhelming with tasks like managing hotel blocks, tracking team details, and accessing real-time analytics.
The right hotel booking software can centralize all housing management tasks, simplifying the process and improving efficiency. This blog post covers what a hotel booking software system is, why modern housing companies are embracing technology and the impacts to your bottom line.
Hotel booking software brings the entire event housing process under one roof. With a best-of-breed, all-in-one software platform, a user can manage hotel RFPs, create booking sites in minutes, monitor pickup in real time, and much more.
Everyone. Whether you are:
Hotel booking software is required to bring all of it together.
Before diving into what a well-oiled hotel booking software platform should have, here's how things were traditionally done before top housing companies began harnessing the power of technology to boost efficiency and generate more housing revenue.
Before the advent of hotel booking or "event housing" technology, many housing processes and procedures were manual, disjointed and a bit of a headache. As covered in a previous blog post, there are five key components of event housing management:
Before hotel booking software, sports housing companies would be tasked with managing these key components in an old-fashioned, obsolete manner. Housing companies were used to fragmented processes like:
But there's a better way with technology.
Doing it manually caps how many events a company can take on. Software lets them handle more volume without adding staff, while keeping event health and revenue in view.
In a nutshell, best-in-class hotel booking software platforms will help sports housing companies stay organized, get a better grasp on the overall health of the events they manage, provide better booking experiences for event attendees, and easily understand the revenue they are generating from events.
Here's a more comprehensive list of what housing companies ought to look for in a hotel booking platform:
The eight below cover the full event housing lifecycle, from sourcing hotels to giving every user the right view of their reservations. As you compare your options, it's important to look for these eight key features when choosing a hotel booking software platform or provider.
EventPipe's hotel booking software platform helps you accomplish all of the above, plus more. Here's what sets EventPipe apart from the rest:
EventPipe is the fastest-growing hotel booking software platform on the market. It’s a startup company dedicated to putting customers first and delivering solutions that help them grow their businesses. EventPipe's team is led by a group of software operators, who have 10+ years of prior experience at various software companies who made successful exits. Want to learn more? Schedule a chat with EventPipe's team today.
Yes. Manual processes leave revenue and time on the table, and a single platform closes that gap.
It's time for sports housing companies to convert from outdated, manual processes to a technological approach with hotel booking (or event housing) software. This transition will revolutionize how housing companies manage and monetize their hotel bookings.
By centralizing the entire event lifecycle under one platform, tasks move faster, attendee experiences are enhanced, and more housing revenue may be generated. As a lifelong hockey player who spent my early years traveling to many tournaments, I'm sure my parents would have appreciated a more smoother hotel booking experience than what was available back then!
From RFP management and customized booking sites to pickup reports and analytics, adopting a technological approach is the way to go. EventPipe's hotel booking software platform is a rising star in the world of event housing management.
Want to chat and learn more? Schedule a demo with EventPipe’s team today and learn how you can take control of your event housing management with a modern, all-in-one housing software platform.
It protects the commission revenue a housing company has already earned. By tracking real bookings against the contracted block, the software keeps reconciliation accurate, so commissions and rebates get billed correctly instead of slipping away through manual errors. It also opens added revenue, like booking-site ad space and reservation add-ons, and gives a clear view of what each event is actually generating.
The numbers that show whether an event is pacing well and paying out correctly. Track pickup (booked rooms vs. actual stays), pace against prior years, reservation volume by hotel, and the commissions and rebates owed at reconciliation. Real-time dashboards make it easier to catch a slow-selling block early and share pacing with the event organizer before it turns into a problem.
It gives both sides one current view of the same room block. The housing company manages contracts, inventory, and the booking site, while the hotel gets portal access to see reservations and the final rooming list across all of its blocks in one place. That cuts the phone tag and spreadsheet emails, and reduces errors when the rooming list moves to the hotel before the event.
Jeff is the Marketing Manager at EventPipe. He brings a decade of Marketing experience with a background in social media, events, SEO, and content. Outside of work, Jeff is an independent Hip Hop artist who regularly releases and performs his music and loves to golf and play ice hockey in his spare time. Jeff holds a bachelor of arts in Economics from Union College, with a minor in Spanish.
