BestCities Global Alliance Taps UniFocus Expertise to Improve Operations

International CVB Organization Implements MEETINGScope to Increase Customer Satisfaction

Dallas—April 15, 2008 —UniFocus, a global pioneer in the hospitality industry for performance, workforce management and feedback solutions, announced that BestCities Global Alliance has selected the firm’s MEETINGScope solution to help them assess and improve customer satisfaction for meeting planners. Their decision was based upon the recommendation of one of their alliance partners, the Puerto Rico Convention Bureau. BestCities Global Alliance is the world’s first and only convention bureau alliance with eight partners on five continents.

MEETINGScope is a Web-based feedback solution that helps convention-visitor bureau and other hospitality organizations improve the meeting event experience and keep their locale on the map as a top destination.

“The BestCities Global Alliance wanted to change from an email-based client feedback to an online feedback system,” said Lisa Klint, general manager of BestCities Global Alliance Head Office based in Denmark. “UniFocus’ MEETINGScope was recommended by our partner in San Juan, and they demonstrated a versatile system that could be used for convention bureau client evaluations. As we transition from pilot phase into full production, we fully expect to get a higher client response rate, better and more flexible reporting options across our eight partners, and enjoy the benefit of a more user-friendly system for our clients. We have also recently implemented a quality management system and our partners of the Alliance are soon to be certified by an independent third party, Lloyd’s Registered Quality Assurance. MEETINGScope helps to demonstrate our client focus in line with our Quality Policy.”

“We are especially excited about MEETINGScope’s instant-reporting feature,” continued Klint. “This kind of functionality enables us to take action immediately and have a much quicker recovery time in the service experience of the meeting planner.”

Klint said UniFocus staff members have gone out of their way to help them customize MEETINGScope for BestCities Global Alliance’s challenging requirements.

“The UniFocus team has been very responsive and fast,” she said. “Since the nature of our alliance is truly global—as we’re in six different global time zones from Australia to Canada—this can be a challenging environment as most of our communication is virtual. UniFocus is doing a great job in adapting MEETINGScope to meet our specific needs. As we move out of the pilot stage, we believe the system will prove to be flexible enough for our different organizations while enhancing the approach of the Alliance team.”

“Our partnership with BestCities Global Alliance represents a major milestone in our ability to gain traction in the convention and visitors bureau space,” said Mark Heymann, UniFocus President and CEO. “UniFocus continues to gain mindshare in the hospitality industry as more companies take advantage of our Web-based technologies to optimize their service quality, performance, operations and profitability. We are committed to helping organizations such as BestCities Global Alliance grow their business by enabling them to acquire client feedback more efficiently, intelligently analyze that data and enhance service delivery.”

UniFocus executives have provided technology leadership to the hospitality industry for more than 25 years. The Dallas-based firm provides proven technology solutions to convention bureaus, hotels and resorts that enable operators to more efficiently manage their workforce and gain a 360-degree view of the employee and customer experience. Equipped with superior business intelligence and labor management technology, UniFocus clients optimize quality, satisfaction, operational efficiency and profitability — with a higher ROI.

UniFocus is a business partner of the International Association of Convention & Visitors Bureaus.

MEETINGScope is a Web-based solution that offers CVBs, hotels, resorts and other hospitality organizations a state-of-the-art tool that streamlines communications, engenders successful meetings, analyzes each aspect of key service-delivery factors, and provides historical data capture for trending and strategic planning—all of which combine to enhance relationships with meeting planners.

Among the benefits MEETINGScope offers are:

• Web-based survey technology and e-mail correspondence—essential to reaching today’s busy meeting planners—that deliver higher response rates and maintain statistical reliability.
• Immediate ’Hot Button’ reports showing important service concerns, even in first-time-business situations.
• A database of more than 100,000 meeting-planner profiles.
• Benchmarking, team performance and results reporting across each department that are delivered in an online system in real-time.
• An integrated Action Plan Tracking System that ties in directly to MEETINGScope to ensure that proper service recovery occurs.
• MEETINGScope training and support provided by a UniFocus team that has decades of hospitality and meeting sales experience.