Exchange Solutions News for 18 December 2024

We're thrilled to share that our product team is hard at work, crafting significant improvements that we're certain you will love. Are you curious about what we have in store for you in the next window? Keep reading to get a sneak peek of the exciting enhancements that await you!

Starting with enhancements from Cvent Passkey...

1. Cvent Passkey: Introducing the All Hotels Page

The new "All Hotels" page is designed to make life easier for Passkey organizers like you. This centralized hub streamlines accessing, adding, and updating hotel and event-related details. Gone are the days of navigating through multiple pages, which often caused confusion and slowed you down. With this update, all hotel management tasks are conveniently consolidated into one intuitive view, offering a faster and more efficient workflow.

What Problem Does This New Feature Solve? The new "Hotels" page simplifies hotel management by centralizing all hotel and event-related tasks into one dedicated view. Previously, accessing, adding, and editing hotels required navigating through multiple pages, often causing confusion and inefficiency. With this streamlined feature, you can now manage hotels more quickly and easily—all from a single, intuitive page.

2. Cvent Passkey: Introducing the Event Overview Page

We’re excited to introduce the new Event Overview and Event Inventory pages—designed to simplify workflows, enhance usability, and elevate your event management experience. With a user-friendly design and powerful features, these updates make navigating, managing, and updating events more intuitive and efficient. The Event Overview page is your new landing hub, providing a clear and organized view of all essential event details at a glance.

What Problem Does This New Feature Solve? Previously, managing event details and associated tasks involved multiple steps and frequent navigation between sections. The Event Overview page addresses these challenges by centralizing event information, simplifying workflows, and saving you valuable time.

Key Benefits:

• Enhanced Visibility: View critical event details—such as dates, tasks, and notifications—all in one convenient location.

• Improved Usability: Streamlined navigation and intuitive workflows make event management faster and easier.

• Centralized Management: Consolidate hotel inventory and settings for seamless updates and actions.

• Customization & Control: The updated design offers greater flexibility and allows for more precise management of hotel-specific tasks.

We're thrilled to introduce these enhancements to our customers and are confident it will elevate their overall experience with Passkey.

3. Cvent Passkey: Stay Compliant with California's New Hotel Fee Laws

California now requires hotels to include mandatory fees in displayed room rates for clearer price comparisons. To help you comply easily, Passkey has enhanced its "Taxes and Fees" features at both Hotel and Event levels. Whether you're in California or beyond, our updates ensure you can manage both "included" and "excluded" taxes and fees seamlessly.

What are "Included" versus "Excluded" Taxes and Fees?

• Included in the displayed rate: These taxes and fees are added to the room's base rate to form the total displayed rate.

• Excluded from the displayed rate: These are not added to the room's base rate and are calculated as additional charges during the checkout process.

Details / Taxes configuration example scenario:

Passkey Booking Site example scenario:

What Happens When the Feature is Launched?

• Automatic Updates: Existing taxes and fees will automatically inherit the "Exclude from displayed rate" value, keeping things as they are now.

• Seamless Changes: Any changes made at the Hotel level will automatically update at the Event level when a new event is created.

• Flexible Options: You can easily convert existing taxes and fees to "Include in displayed rate" or add new ones as needed.

• Specific Application: The new "Displayed Rate" calculation will apply to the Passkey Booking Site, our self-service booking channel for attendees. No changes are required for other booking channels like the Call Center, Multi-Room Booking tool, or Rooming List Manager.

Stay transparent and compliant with Passkey!

Switching gears to Vendor Marketplace...

Cvent Planners can now directly log into Reposite

In our initial Reposite release back in August 2024, we directed all Cvent planners, except those from HelmsBriscoe (HB), to https://app.reposite.io/cvent/planners.

With our latest update, we're making things even easier for you. When you click the "Find vendors" button on the Suppliers blade from either the new or old CSN planner experience, you'll be automatically logged into Reposite. This means you can seamlessly start creating your Reposite RFPs without any extra steps.

Key Features:

• Convenient Auto-Login: If you're already using Reposite, you'll enjoy seamless auto-login.

• Effortless User Creation: New to Reposite? No problem! Your user account will be created automatically.

• Instant Access: Start creating Reposite RFPs with just a single click.

• Exciting Update: We're working on integrating Reposite RFPs into the new CSN planner experience. Stay tuned for more details!

Lastly, Introducing the Instant Book Availability Calendar

You can now view a venue's Instant Book availability for meeting spaces and guest rooms for an entire month in a combined, easy-to-use calendar view. This feature allows you to explore alternative options effortlessly if your first choice isn't available, providing you with flexible event dates. Start shopping for rooms faster than ever before!

Key Features

If your desired meeting rooms and/or guest rooms are not available for your initial event dates, you will be prompted to open the availability calendar. This allows you to browse other dates that may have bookable inventory. When you open the calendar, you'll see clickable tiles for each date with available meeting rooms and/or guest rooms at the property.

Click on the tiles within the calendar to select separate date ranges for meeting rooms and guest rooms. Once you've chosen your desired date ranges, you can proceed to the booking experience to explore available rooms and view pricing.

Benefits

Previously, if your desired dates did not match a venue's inventory, you might have had to retry your search multiple times with different dates until you found availability. With the introduction of the availability calendar, we've eliminated the guesswork. Now, you can view a full month's worth of Instant Book availability upfront.

And that's all for this release window. With these new feature enhancements, your event planning will be smoother and more efficient. Enjoy the enhanced experience and happy planning!

Visit our Community with questions

Questions about anything we’ve rolled out this window? As always, get questions answered in the Community via the Open Forum.

Did you miss our live Q4 2024 Product News Update Webinar earlier this month? Catch the recording here. Special guest VP of Product Development McNeel Keenan shared his thoughts on AI and the priorities driving our product roadmap, in addition to our usual summary of launched releases and what's coming up next.