MGM Resorts introduces GroupMAX across Las Vegas

In a step toward increasing their competitive edge in the number one meetings and events market in the world, Las Vegas, MGM Resorts International announced the deployment of Passkey’s GroupMAX group booking technology across all of its Las Vegas hotels.

“With a collection of 11 world-renowned resorts on the Las Vegas Strip, it is important we provide our customers with a booking technology that exceeds their expectations,” said Richard Harper, executive vice president of sales and marketing for MGM Resorts International. “Passkey’s consistent and proven results give us a strategic advantage in delivering an exceptional and worry-free hotel booking experience to our meeting planners and guests.”

In 2005, MGM Resorts’ properties Mandalay Bay and Luxor began using Passkey’s GroupMAX as a way to collaborate with planners. After experiencing a remarkable return on investment and dependable results, rolling out GroupMAX at the other nine Las Vegas properties was only a matter of time, ultimately creating the first single destination, multi-property company to manage group reservations from a central location.

Now, meeting planners have the industry’s leading group reservation technology at their fingertips, no matter which MGM Resorts’ property they choose to stay at in Las Vegas.

In May 2011, MGM Resorts hosted the annual JCK Las Vegas show, offering the event’s organizer, Reed Exhibitions, the GroupMAX system to manage the tradeshow’s housing operations.

“This was the first time we had used Passkey’s GroupMAX system to manage an entire event’s hotel booking process; with 39 attendee types distributed across 14 hotels’ sub-blocks and room types, the JCK Las Vegas show’s event housing was particularly complex,” said Ron Zobel, Reed Exhibitions. “With the help of the reservation experts at Mandalay Bay, our contracted room blocks picked up over 40,000 room nights, with north of 60 percent of reservations booked online. GroupMAX helped make this process simple, painless and predictable.”

With Passkey’s GroupMAX group reservation suite, MGM Resorts can now offer each event a professional booking website where guests can easily make their reservations online from any web browser or mobile device, while meeting planners can access critical event data from live dashboards, helping them track room block productivity, run proactive reports and manage rooming lists.

Reservations made via GroupMAX’s booking websites directly transfer to MGM Resorts’ internal reservation system, eliminating the time-consuming task of manually re-keying data or the risks inherent in data transfer. The newfound efficiency not only accelerates booking pace, but also increases reservations within contracted blocks, helping maximize bookings for the event and mitigating the planner’s attrition risk, all while providing elevated service levels to both planners and guests.

“The deployment of GroupMAX across MGM Resorts’ Las Vegas portfolio is testament to the increasing importance of technology as a competitive advantage among hotels,” said Greg Pesik, president and CEO of Passkey. “The centralized housing process creates operational consistency, allowing properties to immediately experience benefits, both from an economic and client satisfaction outlook.”

MGM Resort’s 11 Las Vegas properties using the GroupMAX system are ARIA, Bellagio, Vdara, MGM Grand, Mandalay Bay, The Mirage, Monte Carlo, New York-New York, Luxor, Excalibur and Circus Circus.