Zentila Debuts Industry’s First Negotiation Engine

April 19, 2016

Zentila Debuts Industry’s First Negotiation Engine
Tracks and Stores Negotiations Automatically

ORLANDO, Fla., (April 19, 2016) – Venue sourcing and booking provider Zentila released the industry’s first realtime negotiation engine today. Called Negotiation Tracker™, it powers negotiations and takes the complexity out of booking meetings and events.

With hotel occupancy approaching record highs and venue demand outpacing supply growth, negotiating value has become more complicated. Negotiation Tracker simplifies the process, by tracking all communication that takes place during negotiations and storing it in one place. Planners have instant access to the entire bid history, including all back‐and‐forth interactions with hotels. All changes are captured in real time and stored automatically in the system, so planners can manage negotiations more easily and stay up to date.

“Other solutions only show where negotiations start and end,” says Mike Mason, CEO, Zentila. “They omit everything in‐between. Negotiation Tracker powers negotiations and takes the complexity out of gathering bid details from multiple venues. Planners get not just a snapshot, but a complete timeline of each rebid.

“The solution enables planners to quantify the work they put into negotiating a great deal and validate the savings they drive,” Mason continues. “Stakeholders can see at a glance all the effort put forth on their behalf.”

Zentila is on a mission to push meeting technology further with intuitive, new approaches to sourcing, booking and capturing data to save time and money. Negotiation Tracker is part of the vision. Here is how the solution makes negotiations less complicated to help planners and hotels get meetings booked.

Streamlines Communications – Planners might start off negotiations with personal phone calls to sales managers and then handle the cluster of follow‐up communications through Negotiation Tracker. In a couple clicks, they can request rebids, specify changes and ask for more savings opportunities. The platform provides a record of the entire bid process. If a concession is dropped from the current offer, planners have the earlier version at their fingertips for proof of inclusion.

Drives Informed Decisions – Negotiation Tracker displays the entire evolution of each bid. Think changes in: total savings and costs; concession values; room rates; costs for food and beverage, break‐out sessions, meeting rooms, and more. Calculations are done automatically. Planners can customize the view and easily make comparisons, such as differences in rates and concessions between the original offer and the current one and every bid version in between. Green arrows signal good news (e.g. growth in total savings), and red arrows flag bad (e.g. reductions in concession savings).

Scores of comparisons are made easy to strengthen negotiating power and drive sound decision‐making. For example, planners can see right away how each hotel stacks up against the others. They also can compare preferred dates to alternate ones and find the best option by date range. 

Saves Hours of Work– There is no need to hunt through past emails, voicemails and meeting notes. With all communications gathered automatically, planners save hours previously spent creating comparisons and charting them in spreadsheets. The platform’s Changes Over Time graph quickly displays vital trends, such as growth in savings and reduction in costs. Planners can customize the view to highlight salient information and export graphs to meeting owners for focused discussions.

Showcases Planner Value – Zentila is the industry’s only technology to capture concession value in dollars. Values are quantified by hotels for ease and credibility. The solution enables planners to showcase the value they drive by highlighting dollar savings as well as the effort put forth to arrive at the final offer.

“Negotiation Tracker is super‐intuitive and (dare I say) fun,” Mason notes. “New planners and pros can master it in just a few minutes. Plus, Zentila gurus are available to answer questions and provide support, if needed.”

For more information on Negotiation Tracker, contact Ryan McGlynn, (ryan.mcglynn@zentila.com) or call 407‐656‐5683.

About Zentila
Zentila is a first‐of‐its‐kind strategic sourcing and booking solution for meetings and events. The award‐winning platform enables organizations and third‐party planners to easily source and capture meeting and event data – all in one place. Zentila’s user‐friendly planning and administration tools add transparency to company meeting activities and reduces the time and costs associated with sourcing and contracting meeting venues. Its SaaS‐based meetings management technology captures M&E spend for corporations, providing visibility to this hard‐to‐track category. For more information on this breakthrough solution, visit Zentila.com.

Zentila provides access to 225,000 meeting hotels worldwide. The company received Travel Weekly’s 2015 and 2014 Gold Magellan Awards in the Online Travel Services category. It recently celebrated a milestone, having helped planners source more than a quarter‐billion room nights.

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Media Contact:
Sharlet Brennan
sharletbrennan@gmail.com