Increased activity for the first six weeks of 2010 has seen the volume of Request for Meetings enquiries to hotels and venues surge by 234%. “These early signs lead us to be cautiously optimistic about business growth”, said Linda Paterson, Head of Distribution for ABC Connection, online publisher for the hospitality industry.

“Renewed focus on the meetings sector especially by Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs) is ramping up interest among meetings bookers for an end-to-end system to manage their venue search, enquiry, negotiation and client proposal process,” continued Paterson.

The company is seeing an unprecedented demand for its hosted Request for Meetings (RfM) system from hotel booking agents and travel management companies looking for a technology solution to streamline processes, save costs and improve customer service.

Request for Meetings integrates with ABC Connection’s extensive content database and is deployed and maintained as a custom-branded solution at no cost to its RfM partners.

New features of Request for Meetings are: Global Search, RfM Scratchpad and Online Proposal. Global Search is very flexible and has been introduced to support agents with international clients or those looking for an international destination. RfM Scratchpad increases productivity by capturing a complete and accurate brief at the outset with no need to re-key information. Online Proposal automatically creates professional proposals for the client to view online and compare facilities and prices at-a-glance, eliminating the need for printing and making it easier and quicker for clients to make an informed choice.