Capturing the Room Nights Most Destinations Miss in Sports Tourism

"Don't think of Playeasy as a replacement for your servicing efforts. It's just another way to extend and organize the efforts for the right events".

Kayla Adams

National Sales Manager: Sports

Q1: When an event is coming to Greenville, what are the things you're most focused on making sure are in place for the organizer and their attendees?

The way we're broken down here at Visit Greenville, we have a sales department and then a destination services department. I go out and recruit business, solicit business, and once there's a fit and there's a contract signed, there's a handoff that happens between sales and services. But I think regardless of whether it's us or destination services, our focus is making sure the organizer feels supported and that the attendee experience is easy to navigate.

I think a lot of it starts with aligning internally with the great work the services department already does. They build out custom itineraries, things to do, perks and promotions, amenities, giveaways -they're some of the best in the country at what they do. And then naturally, for sports & especially youth tournaments, Playeasy has given us another way to extend that support. It lets us package event-specific information in one place, so teams and coaches and parents and attendees can find hotels, local recommendations, promotions, things to do while they're here. So our focus, to answer your question, is to make sure everyone feels supported - the organizer, the attendees, and the families while they're here.

Q2: Before Playeasy, what did event servicing look like for you for sports events? How were you handling hotels, partner recommendations, and communicating with rights holders and their attendees?

Before Playeasy, we always left it up to the event organizer. We provide our room blocks through Sendsites. That's where we send the initial proposal and then once they choose those hotels, we leave it up to the event organizer as to how they like to distribute the information; whether it's a PDF, email, etc.

Like I said, we've always provided really strong services even before Playeasy through our destination services team. But what Playeasy has specifically helped with is giving us tools to provide an event-specific resource for certain events. I use it mostly for youth sporting events that aren't your typical stay-to-play (where it isn’t required to book at specific hotels). The event organizer is focused on coming to Greenville and making sure their event is well run. The hotels and the things to do are not top of mind to them. So what Playeasy has done is just help us package that information up to make it easy for them to distribute, in a one-click way.

Q3: Were you able to track much data before - hotel pickup, promotion redemptions, etc?

We have a feature in our CRM where we can request pickup from the hotel. And it's great that we're able to do that, but I think one of the challenges with that is if someone is not staying in a specific block, then the hotel won't know that they're staying in that block, so it won't count as pickup for the event. A lot of times with sports, they may book after the cutoff or a week before, some of them might book on the way there, and they won't be counted as pickup.

So what I've always loved about y'all's platform is the live rate component, where it switches to live rates once the room blocks expire and it gives us that data we were previously missing. And it even captures data for a participant that’s literally booking that room on the way to the event. It gives us a lot more of that booking data, which we love.

Jake's Take

I met Kayla on a basketball court.

Just a casual conference pickup game. But let me tell you, she can hoop! Killer on the court and off it!

Here's what I mean when I say she crushes it off the court.

Last year Kayla was at our Summit, sitting in a session where Jordan from Visit York County explained how his team ties event page sharing to their funding agreements. Simple idea. Most people would've nodded, written it down, and never thought about it again.

Kayla flew home and built it into Greenville's contracts.

Now if a group wants funding from Greenville, sharing their Playeasy event page is part of the deal. That one change fixed the hardest part of all of this, which is getting organizers to actually share their pages instead of letting them sit like a duck. And it shows. Greenville keeps climbing the trending destinations leaderboard with full data behind how their events are performing, and it traces straight back to that.

What I respect is how clear she is about why it works. She doesn't treat Playeasy as a replacement for her services team (who she'll happily tell you is the best in the country). She treats it as a way to do more of what they're already great at, starting with the events where it matters most.

So as you read these thought leader pieces, here's the takeaway: you don't need to leave with ten ideas.

Kayla left with one and is building from there.

Shoot me a note with your one takeaway from this if you learn something new!

Q4: You have climbed the leaderboard for trending Playeasy destinations and a lot of this success has come from your event pages. What's your process for getting event organizers to share your event pages with their attendees?

Playeasy has been such a great opportunity to strengthen and streamline how we communicate with the event organizer and the participants. Some organizers still want to provide hotel options and destination info, but they don't want to manage a formal housing process or sign a courtesy block. And from the destination side, we want to support all of our member hotels and help them capture room nights and support our member businesses too.

So with the event pages, if a group needs funding, we tie it into the funding package. It's part of their contract that says, hey, in order for us to provide these funds, you have to use Playeasy. That really incentivizes the organizer to use it. And we've put in there that failure to use Playeasy may disqualify you for future funding. We're not going to pull funding after the event if someone says they'll use it and doesn't. But we'll say, “hey, in order to keep getting funding from us, this is our process”. And it's a win for everyone - the participant, the organizers, families, business members, and hotels. It's only going to be an extension of your experience here.

When I was at the Summit last year, Jordan from York County said that they tied sharing the pages to their funding, and I thought that was a great call-out for us and a best practice. So we've started doing it, and it's been great.

Q5: You have 40 promotions live right now; how did you go about setting those up with businesses? How do you communicate the Playeasy promotions to these businesses for increased membership/partner value?

We already have a membership program, and the perks and promotions get updated every year. We've always had those in a PDF that we offer to every group that comes into Greenville, not just sporting events. So what we did is we simply took what was already on our website and in that PDF and added each one of them to Playeasy.

It's become a good SOP for us now, where each year when we update the whole perks and promotions page, we automatically shift it over to Playeasy and update those perks and promotions now too. A lot of the partner value connects back to work that we do here. Our destination experiences team does such a great job setting those up every year. One of our top promotions that always does well for sports is the access to the Adidas employee store. We're happy to give another place for our perks and promotions to really shine, especially in front of sports attendees.

Q6: Across everything you've implemented on Playeasy, what's driven the most value for your destination?

I think the live hotel rate functionality has probably driven most of the practical value, especially with the youth sports events that are not stay to play. Like I mentioned, it creates that flexibility as a hotel solution that benefits everyone. They get access to the real-time options instead of booking elsewhere if a block is cut off. And we get the data tied back to the event.

I was an athlete growing up and played in numerous tournaments, and sometimes my mom would book on the way there. If you restrict an event organizer to just that option, then there's a possibility, that they might book outside of the block on the way to the event (like my mom did) which skews the booking data. The organizers have a resource that they can share without managing a room block, and our member hotels get the visibility to the sport traveler. And I think from our perspective, we're able to support room night generation without creating unnecessary friction for the organizer and the hotel partner.

Because if you were an event organizer and you set up these courtesy blocks and then they don't pick up, the hotel is going to look at your organization and say, “You know, that darn AAU, they never pick up”. Which in reality they do, it's just being done in a different way. So I think Playeasy has provided such a great way for people just to look outside the box when it comes to sports travelers.

Q7: Have organizers or attendees given you any feedback on your event pages/experiences?

One that comes to mind is our Smash Pickleball Tournament run by the Greenville County Parks and Rec. We set up a Playeasy event page on their behalf for their event which occurs twice a year. They've given me some of the best feedback because they're so local to Greenville. They know our hotels, member benefits, restaurants, etc.

The feedback that they've given me is that it just makes it easier. It’s one or two less things to worry about when it comes to running my event. They live here, so they're so focused on running the event with the facility here. But from a visitor perspective, they're not necessarily thinking about it. Playeasy has allowed them to sit down and run their event, but now also cater to the visitor for things that they might have overlooked initially. All my groups love it. It's really in the name “easy”.

Q8: What would you tell a sports destination that's still piecing their content together across word docs, emails, and separate pages? Or any advice on how to best utilize Playeasy tools?

I would tell them not to think of Playeasy as a replacement for their existing servicing efforts. It's just another way to extend and organize the efforts for the right events. So if your team was already creating itineraries, gathering partner offers, recommending hotels, sharing things to do, Playeasy just helps package that information together in a way that is easy for sports organizers to share with attendees.

I also would encourage destinations to look closely at their event mix. Not every sports event needs the same servicing approach. For us, Playeasy has been specifically helpful for sports tournaments that are not stay to play. My advice would be to start with the events that will make the biggest difference: just building a simple event page template, using live rates, and then putting perks and promotions on there. And we use the AI feature as well when it comes to the description for creating the event page. I mean, I could set up a page in less than five minutes because everything is already on there.

That’s exactly how we did it. We started with the youth sports groups that don't use stay to play, and now that we've gotten comfortable and built an SOP around it, I want to start incorporating more SOPs for the collegiate events, the professional events, and the meetings we do.

Q9: What's Greenville focused on building next - new servicing offerings, or strengthening what you already have?

We're focused on strengthening what we already have. With Playeasy specifically, I'm now looking at how we can integrate it with groups that do use stay to play, and whether we can use it for our collegiate events and our meetings and conventions. What does that look like? It's really about going a little beyond the standard of how we typically use Playeasy, just to supplement our event services team even more. We're also starting to get our marketing team more involved in posting content on the platform, so everyone on there can see what we have going on here and our wins.

I know I'm hyping them up, but I really think our services department is the best in the country at what they do. Their biggest thing is just continuing to build on the event satisfaction survey they do each year. I think they're at like 98% every year, and I'm sure they want to get to 99. We all have goals to get better, but they don't have much room to, they're already doing great. So a lot of it is just listening more to the client as to what their needs are. Here in Greenville, we really customize the experience, so as we continue to diversify our events, naturally we're going to be challenged to service these different groups in different ways.