DMC: what a destination management company is, and how it books hotels

ADMEI, the Association of Destination Management Executives International, defines a DMC as a professional services company located in its destination: a local firm with the knowledge and resources on the ground to design and run events, tours, transport, entertainment and the logistics of a whole programme.

EHL Hospitality Business School describes the same thing from a hotel's side. In the places they specialise in, DMCs arrange meet-and-greet, transfers, accommodation, restaurants, activities, excursions, conference venues, themed events and gala dinners, and they can often get preferential rates because of how much they buy from the suppliers they prefer.

Marriott Bonvoy Events, writing for meeting planners, puts it in a line: a local event partner who can arrange transport, experiences away from the hotel and team-building.

• Travel agents and tour operators abroad, who sell trips to India and need a firm on the ground to arrange each day of them. Inbound tour operators and ground handlers do much of the same work, and the names overlap.
• Companies and event planners holding a conference, an incentive trip or a product launch in your town, who need venues, transport and dinners as well as rooms.
• Wedding planners bringing a destination wedding, with guests, functions and transfers over several days.
• Indian travel agents selling holidays in a region they don't know well, who buy the arrangements on the ground from a DMC there.

A DMC books hotels in the towns its trips pass through. If your town sits on a route that groups travel, the DMCs that sell that route are worth knowing by name.

A DMC usually asks for a net rate: a price for the room that it pays you, which is not for the public, and to which it adds its own margin before selling the whole trip at one price. VisitEngland's glossary for the trade puts the two sides plainly: the gross rate is the price the guest pays, and the net rate is the gross rate less the commission, the amount you receive.

• A contract for the season or the year, with net rates by room type and meal plan, the seasons and their dates, and the nights it doesn't apply to.
• An allotment: a number of rooms held for the DMC each night, which it may book until a set number of days before arrival, the release period.
• Separate rates for individual travellers on their own itinerary (FIT) and for tour groups (GIT).
• Rooms for a group's tour leader, driver and guide, and whether each is free or at a rate: the model contracts that come with the IH&RA and UFTAA code of practice have a line for their rooms.
• Payment terms: a deposit, credit for a set number of days against an invoice, or payment before arrival.

• That the net rate is not to be shown to the public, or sold on its own on a booking site, below your own website's price.
• Which rooms and which nights are in any allotment, and the release period for each season.
• How a booking is made and confirmed: by email to a named address, with a reference number and each guest's full name.
• When the rooming list is due. The IH&RA and UFTAA code of practice, written for hotels and agents in different countries, asks for a group's rooming list at least 7 days before arrival when nothing else is agreed.
• The cancellation and no-show terms, for individuals and for groups.
• When and how you are paid, and what happens if a payment is late.
• What the DMC may say and show about your hotel. The IH&RA and UFTAA model allotment contract asks that a hotel's description and photos in an agent's brochure match the hotel and be agreed with its management.
• What happens if you can't give a confirmed room. The same code says the hotel then finds the guest a room at the nearest equivalent hotel at its own cost, pays any difference and the transport there, and brings the guest back when a room is free, if they wish.

So compare a DMC's rate not only with your public price, but with what you would sell those nights for without it.

• Find the DMCs that sell your region: ask the guides and drivers who bring groups to your town which companies they work for.
• Send each a rate sheet for the season, your rooms and what is near you, with photos they may use.
• Offer to show a DMC's staff round the hotel, or host them for a night: they sell what they have seen.
• Answer each request the same day. A DMC building a trip needs every hotel on it confirmed before it can confirm the trip.
• Keep a count of each DMC's room nights by month, and review the rate each year with the ones that send guests.
• Check now and then that no net rate has reached a public booking site below your own price.