RoomTrust has always provided conference and meeting organisation services but in the last year we have gained a great deal of experience in digital (online) events too. As a technology and event service company we have happily embraced the world of digital/virtual events and have managed many such events on various platforms since March 2020. Along the way we have acquired a great deal of knowledge and many new skill sets.

We firmly believe that online digital events and onsite events with digital content (hybrid) are here to stay, so we have formed a specialist new service called “Composite” to provide creative digital event design and production. RoomTrust partners in Composite with Events by KM and its founder, Katinka Estrade. Katinka is a talented and creative event designer and a protocol consultant and we are excited to be working with her.

You can see our full range of digital event services here, at www.composite.events

Please do not hesitate to contact us to see what we can do for you.

Philip Griffin, 22/02/2021

RoomTrust has always provided conference and meeting organisation services but in the last year we have gained a great deal of experience in digital (online) events too. As a technology and event service company we have happily embraced the world of digital/virtual events and have managed many such events on various platforms since March 2020. Along the way we have acquired a great deal of knowledge and many new skill sets.

We firmly believe that online digital events and onsite events with digital content (hybrid) are here to stay, so we have formed a specialist new service called “Composite” to provide creative digital event design and production. RoomTrust partners in Composite with Events by KM and its founder, Katinka Estrade. Katinka is a talented and creative event designer and a protocol consultant and we are excited to be working with her.

You can see our full range of digital event services here, at www.composite.events

Please do not hesitate to contact us to discuss what we can do for you.

Philip Griffin, 22/02/2021

As our industry starts down the road to recovery, hotels have taken guest safety very seriously and introduced some very specific measures to protect their guests.

RoomTrust has added a new feature so that hotels can now display the health protection measures they have put in place at their property.

Hotels can add these measures in a new section on the Amenities page, which can also be seen by event organisers when selecting a hotel.

Guests can see the measures when making a booking by clicking on the new icon on the booking screen.

We hope that this new feature will help our hotel partners to showcase the safe environment they have created for visiting guests and, in turn, further encourage the return of the events we have all sorely missed.

We are very happy to see our hotel partners beginning to open their doors again. We hope business returns quickly.

Clearly, it will take some time before guest confidence to travel and stay is restored to previous levels, but we are greatly encouraged by the measures put in place by hotels everywhere to keep guests safe.

To help our hotel partners communicate their safety measures to protect guests RoomTrust is adding a new system feature so that hotels can specify the measures they have in place. Guests will be able to see these measures when choosing a hotel to book in RoomTrust.

Watch this space, we will release additional information very shortly. In the meantime, to our hotel partners, it's great to see you back!

During our many years in business the current COVID-19 crisis is by far the most far-reaching and difficult we have faced.

It continues to affect individuals, families and businesses on an unprecedented scale across nations and continents. The consequences will be felt for many years to come, and enormous strength, ingenuity and cooperation will be required to help us through and rebuild once the crisis recedes.

RoomTrust remains open to support all our users and partners through this difficult time and stands ready to work with you as normality returns. Whatever assistance, advice or service we can provide to help you, we gladly offer.

We extend our best wishes to the individuals, companies, organisations and hotels we work with. Please stay strong, safe and well.

To our agency and hotel partners, this is a particularity devastating time. We are open to cooperate in any way we can to help you through and to assist in rebuilding our industry in the months ahead.

RoomTrust has added the functionality for organisers to create and manage sub-blocks of rooms. This is a much-requested functionality for sports tournaments and all types of conferences. It enables event organisers create and allocate sub-blocks of rooms to specific teams or companies use solely for their event participants.

Once sub-blocks are created the team or accommodation manager is sent a link through which they can select the hotel(s) they want and confirm the number of rooms required. These rooms are then available solely for their participants to book via a unique access code for a defined period of time.

Event organisers (and hotels) have an overview of the master block and team or accommodation managers can check the status of their sub-block and their bookings.

Our very best wishes to all our client and hotel users for 2020. We wish you health, happiness and success in everything you do.

2020 will be a year of continued development for RoomTrust so look out for some great new functionality as the year progresses.

Thanks for your continued support and we really look forward to working with you in 2020!

The RoomTrust knowledge base is now available online for organiser and hotel users. You can find answers to your questions by searching the Help pages via the HELP link.

Follow the link to the Organiser or Hotel help pages and you can search under the subject headers or by using words or short phrases.

We will be adding more pages so that every possible question is covered. The Help pages are for the benefit of all users - so tell us if you think something is missing.

You will also be able to find the most recent release notes in the knowledge base for details that may not yet be incorporated into the knowledge base

The RoomTrust development team has been busy since the start of 2019 and the first new release of the year is in! This release concentrates on two areas:

Secure rooming lists for non-connected hotels
Formally, for hotels not connected to RoomTrust, it has been necessary to send rooming lists by email in an encrypted format. Now it is possible to send the non-connected hotel a temporary link to RoomTrust to be able to run their own rooming list, further enhancing data security.

Report enhancements
The reports module has been greatly enhanced for the key group reports: Status Report, Rooming List, Change Report, Invoice Requests and Travel Information. All reports have been reformatted and are available in html, pdf and xls formats from the Reports home page or the group’s Reservation List page.     
Further changes to the Reports module are underway with greater flexibility of data reporting.

Further updates will follow shortly, keep your eyes on this space!

The entire RoomTrust team send their very best wishes to all client and hotel users for the New Year. We hope 2019 brings you every success, health and happiness.

RoomTrust has a year of exciting new developments planned that we can't wait to share with you. Stay tuned!

The latest system updates introduce some great new features for organizers.

Hotel and hotel contract details visible to all user types
All user types can now see the details of hotels in the system via the ‘Hotel’ menu item. Current contracts relevant to the user’s company or organization are also visible on the hotel list page. If hotels contracts exist for your company, there is a “Contracts” button top right.
Whilst all users now have the visibility of the hotel details it is only those with the ‘Manager’ user status that can add new hotels or edit hotel details.

Payment override feature
Where event room blocks have been set up to request the credit card details of participants during the booking process, it was not previously possible to for the event organizers to make bookings for event paid VIPs, speakers without adding credit card details. There now exists a feature for organizers to make bookings and request that they are guaranteed and paid by the event without the need for a credit card. Whenever required, just let us know, and we will set this feature for you.

Multiple participant login types
For the more complex events there are often multiple participant types: some paying their own hotels, some being paid by the event. Sometimes you also wish different participant types to have access to different hotels too. It is now possible to set different participant types and provide them different login codes. The login code will define which hotels and room types they see and whether or not they should guarantee and pay their own rooms.
If you have events of this type let us know during the planning phase and we will help you to create the login types.

Some ‘bug’ fixes
Where a minimum number of nights for a booking is specified when setting up the room block the system now verifies that the minimum nights requested does not exceed the number of nights in the booking.
The bug that prevented guest names for future dates being found during a name search has been fixed.

The Knowledge base
Very shortly a knowledge base will be available in RoomTrust enabling users to search for tips on “how to do” for the system features and functionality.  

The latest release (4.9.5) of RoomTrust provides an enhancement of the 'Import Guest Names' functionality for event organisers. For organisers managing rooming lists it's now easier than ever to import guests names into RoomTrust via a word processing or spreadsheet application - just copy/paste rather than entering names one by one. If you also include the email address of the guests, Roomtrust will send the guest confirmations automatically when you complete the process.

If you create participant booking pages linked to your group allocations/room blocks it is now possible to show available rooms without rates as an option. This is useful if you have events where rooms are paid by your organisation and you don't want participants to choose hotels based on rates.

The next exciting updates will be in October when there will be a combination of user-requested changes and some additional enhancements for all.

The mid-July system update adds some new features for event managers:

• A new participant booking site status has been introduced – rather than either open or closed, a new “Restricted” mode prevents new bookings but allows participants with bookings to make changes.
• ‘Change requests’ submitted to hotels can now be cancelled if circumstances change
• Event managers can now request notification of any changes to bookings after the release date for non-connected hotels. This information will remind event managers to update non-connected hotel about changes to rooms lists

The June update introduced a news archive – so users can click on the ‘News archive’ to see previous news items.

For hotel users, the standard terms and conditions of use will be updated before the end of July. The changes are minor, but hotels users will be required to agree them before responding to any new requests. Once ready, you will be reminded at login to read and agree the new terms.

At RoomTrust we have always been eager to push the boundaries of engineering in order to provide our clients with a reliable, secure and performant system. We firmly believe that technology is the key to success, and staying in the forefront of the continuously evolving landscape of innovation benefits our customers as well as ourselves.

We switched to Scala as main programming language in 2012 and migrated our entire infrastructure to the cloud by the end of 2013, replacing a monolithic architecture with microservices running on lightweight servers. Since then we have been working relentlessly on improving the user experience, introducing new modules for booking, hotel management, administration and reports.

We are proud to announce that we have just made another important step, by extending our technology stack with serverless functions, which provide a powerful fault tolerant and highly scalable solution, allowing us to focus on functionality instead of infrastructure

RoomTrust is happy to announce that we are now fully GDPR compliant. In fact, not much has changed as we have always prioritized the protection of any personal information provided to us. It is only ever used for the purpose intended and never sold or shared with third parties. Corporate, event management and hotel users will no longer receive system news and updates by default - but you can opt-in again by changing the setting in your personal profile. The details of our commitment to data protection can be read via the link at the base of all our web pages.

Now, we can get back to developing the exciting system improvements we have planned for you...

Agency and Corporate managers can now manage their own hotels in RoomTrust so any hotel, anywhere in the world, can now be incorporated for event participants to book. Additionally, hotels in RoomTrust with a non-connected status can be invited to connect. Working with connected hotels saves time and money - block contracting is direct and paperless and connected hotels can see block status and run their own rooming lists! RoomTrust is now the complete tool for event professionals managing hotel accommodation.

Version 4.8.0 has just been released and completely updates the management of hotel information and users.

A new hotel module is now accessible from the "Profile" link for hotels with a clear and simple interface. It enables greatly improved hotel information, more and better images and a clear and simple user management screen.

Improved hotel information benefits organisers and participant bookers, who now see enhanced hotel detail when making their selections.