The Williamsburg Hotel Motel Association suspended its customer call center in mid-August due to a lack of funding.
The WHMA had run its call center, which offered local assistance to visitors with questions about the area, since 1976. Since the Williamsburg Area Destination Marketing Committee (a regional destination marketing entity comprised of local government and tourism representatives) decided in 2009 to stop using the WHMA as its booking engine, the WHMA has struggled to fund this service.
Funding for the call center was supported by the commission the WHMA received as the local booking engine for the area prior to 2009; some funding also came from sports group reservations, according to WHMA Executive Director Priscilla Caldwell. Earlier this year, sports groups chose to move reservations to a national agency. “In the absence of the majority of leisure and sports reservations, the internal reservations system is not self-supporting at this time,” Caldwell said.
The WHMA said last year it cost about $200,000 a year to maintain the call center. In its earlier days, the call center had a staff of 15, according to Caldwell, but before it closed it was down to two employees.
The Tourist Information Center created and funded by the WHMA in 2010 will remain open and will continue to help visitors, according to Caldwell (who also serves as the Center’s executive director). The Information Center helps guests get tickets to all area attractions and information on local retail, restaurant and lodging facilities; it also helps people book restaurant and hotel reservations.
After WADMC moved to California-based ARES for its booking engine, the WHMA eventually chose its own new reservation search engine called BookDirect by JackRabbit Systems. Unlike a traditional third-party system such as ARES, which books rooms for local hotels and keeps a fee for the service, BookDirect functions more like a search engine for visitors who can use it to find a hotel and then book directly with the hotel’s preferred website, thus cutting out the third-party site. BookDirect charges a flat annual lease rate for its service instead of using a commission or fee system.
The WHMA will continue to maintain BookDirect, Caldwell says.
WHMA President Billy Scruggs says the Association is focusing more on advocacy now that the area has a more defined Destination Marketing Organization (read more about that here).
Visit the WHMA website at gowilliamsburg.com.
