Closing High-Volume Group Business with Tailored Tours
Rising over San Diego’s waterfront just steps from the San Diego Convention Center and the historic Gaslamp Quarter, Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego is a landmark of the downtown skyline. The property features 1,628 guest rooms across two towers and 140,000 square feet of dedicated indoor meeting space (320,000 square feet of total event space), including a 34,000 square foot Grand Ballroom, signature 32nd and 33rd floor venues, and standout outlets like Top of the Hyatt and Sally’s Waterfront Dining.
The hotel is a group-first property, with more than 70% of its business coming from group sales and the remainder transient. For a hotel of this scale, selling the space effectively, especially to planners and guests who never set foot on property before booking, comes with its own set of challenges.
Situation
At 1,628 rooms and 140,000 square feet of meeting space spread across two towers, Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego has more assets than most planners can process at once. Lauren Patton, the sales manager who covers the mid-size market and accounts across California and Hawaii, described the risk of showing too much. Her clients need to see exactly their space, not the hotel’s full scale, so they don’t “feel like they’re a small fish in a big pond”.
That challenge is compounded by how much of the property’s business closes without an in-person visit at all.
85% to 90% of our business is booked sight unseen.
Process
Merchandising Across Hyatt.com and Outlet Websites
The property has built Visiting Media into nearly every corner of its digital presence. Megan Madrigal, the property’s Area Director of Marketing, described how thoroughly it’s woven into Hyatt.com:
It’s on our Hyatt.com. All of our guest rooms have the 3D tours, the suites have the 3D tours. And then our meeting space page, our meetings and events page, every space has the 3D tour attached to it there... And then we have the full hotel tour on the homepage.
Smaller outlets get their own treatment too: Top of the Hyatt and Sally’s each have dedicated vanity websites with dollhouse-style tours built specifically to help sell those spaces for private events.
Keeping Assets Current Through an Ongoing Renovation
The property is currently mid-renovation and reshooting spaces as each one comes back online. Megan Madrigal described the back-end process for updating assets as straightforward throughout, even with the added complexity of a renovation happening alongside a platform migration.
That’s all been very easy and friendly, the way that it’s organized, it’s done really well. There’s good communication.
Results
Customizing Tours for a Large, Complex Property
Rather than sending clients the full property tour, the sales team builds focused, custom tours scoped to just the spaces relevant to a specific proposal. Marissa Cats, Senior Sales Manager who has been with the property for 16 years and sells the Northeast and pharma markets remotely from Washington state, sees real potential in that approach for her market:
I think it’s a really good tool especially for our small market, because if a client clicks on just the link to the whole hotel it could be a little overwhelming. But if we have the ability, which we do, to create a custom experience and just show them exactly what we want them to see... I think that is a strong selling point for our small market.
Closing Group Business Booked Sight Unseen
With the vast majority of group business never seeing the property in person before booking, the sales team relies on tours to do the work a site visit normally would. Lauren Patton explained that customization is what makes this possible at scale, being especially valuable for third-party planners who need to paint the picture for their own clients.
A More Flexible Back End for a High-Volume Property
The team noted that the current platform’s back end is a significant improvement over the prior version, giving users more direct control over what they build and share with each planner or guest. Marissa noted the front-end experience for recipients has stayed largely the same, but the added back-end control has expanded what the team can now do.
Big Win
Marissa Cats shared how some colleagues use the platform to move slow-moving clients off the fence. When a prospective group drags its feet on committing to a date for an in-person site visit, they send the tour to create urgency and keep the deal moving instead of waiting on the client’s timeline.
If a prospect responds to an RFP in August saying, “Oh yeah, we can come out for a site in November”, the sales managers promptly send them the tour, calling some urgency, considering there are 12 other people selling this space on these dates. From there, they will jump on a call with the planner for a walkthrough just to get them excited enough to take that next step.
Summary
For a hotel with 1,628 rooms and 140,000 square feet of event space, Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego has found a way to make an enormous property feel personal to every planner it works with. By pairing custom, focused tours with a platform built to support a high volume of group business, the team has turned what could be an overwhelming scale into a selling point, especially for the sight-unseen bookings that make up the bulk of its business. It’s a reminder that even the biggest properties can win business one tailored experience at a time.
Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego Quick Overlook
- Segment: Full-Service Hotel, Group / Convention
- Space: 1,628 rooms | 140,000 sq. ft. dedicated meeting space (320,000 sq. ft. total event space)
- Facts: 85-90% of group business is booked sight unseen