Panorama: San Diego Partners with the Nation’s Leading Housing Providers

Nation’s Leading Housing Providers Partner with San Diego Convention Hotels

ITS and ARES, Advanced Reservations Systems, Inc., are San Diego’s newest convention hotel housing partners. In September, ITS, one of the industry’s most recognized names in housing, was selected as the preferred housing provider of hotel room block reservation services for Center clients and guests. In addition, San Diego-based ARES was chosen to provide hotel reservation services for convention attendees after room block cut-off dates, typically within 30 days.

Considered the one-stop event solution for housing needs, ITS has an outstanding service record with convention planners and hoteliers nationwide. ITS is widely recognized for employing the latest technology for room block management and reservation and reporting systems for meeting planners, exhibitors and attendees alike. They will provide full service housing using web-based technology and proprietary software. Customer focused, they also have a customer service call center staffed with experienced agents familiar with San Diego.

The ultimate goal was to select a provider that not only met, but exceeded our client and hotel partner’s expectations and had a clear vision for future service enhancements.

ITS was founded in 1946 and is headquartered out of Deerfield, IL. In addition to San Diego, ITS is the preferred housing provider for New York, Chicago, Dallas, Washington DC, Hawaii, Philadelphia, San Francisco and New Orleans.

If convention attendees need hotel reservations after room block cut off dates, ARES is available to help. San Diego based, ARES specializes in providing customized web-based reservation solutions. Attendees will like their user-friendly on-line reservation technology, too. Like ITS, ARES makes it easy -- hotel and other destination arrangements can be made on-line from the comfort of any computer or through the toll-free reservation assistance call center.

To ensure that both of these service providers were chosen with the same high service standards as the Convention Center, a special housing task force was formed. Participants included the Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego, San Diego Marriott and Marina Hotel, Omni San Diego and the Town & Country Hotel. The ultimate goal was to select a provider that would not only meet, but exceed client and hotel expectations and have a clear vision for future service enhancements.

“With the active participation of our task force members, we explored many excellent housing service companies in the market, but ITS and ARES were the right fit for San Diego,” says Sandra Moreno, the Convention Center’s Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing.

Already three events are using ITS. They include: American Telemedicine Association, May 7 – 10, 2006, 15,000 attendees; American Society of Military Comptrollers, May 29 – June 2, 2006, 4,500 attendees; and International Nortel Networks Meridian Users Group, June 11 – 16, 2006, 3000 attendees.