Several of the hotel companies booked most often by ConferenceDirect associates and clients — Marriott, Hyatt and Caesars — have been hard at work coming up with new value-adds and enhancements for their meeting clients. Here’s a quick overview of some of the latest news.

Marriott

At a recent Marriott Convention & Resort Network event in Boston, executives representing Marriott’s Convention & Resort Network (CRN) — a portfolio of 125 specialized hotels and resorts across more than 50 destinations — outlined some new CRN initiatives. The network offers repeatable planning processes, consistent teams and shared learnings, sourcing guidance and tailored recommendations, as well as a simplified contracting review, approval and planning processes for multiple hotels and across several years so planners can manage multiple programs and years under a single contract.

Among the new and notable offerings they discussed:

– The double Marriot Bonvoy points offer, where planners who book an event or meeting before December 31, 2025, for events held by December 31, 2026, can earn double points

– Marriott’s “Connect Responsibly” sustainability program, offered by Marriott Bonvoy Events and available at participating Marriott properties,  provides tools like detailed Meeting Impact Reports to track carbon and water footprints, access to carbon offset projects via a partnership with South Pole, and resources on sustainably sourcing ingredients, reducing single-use items and minimizing food waste. It’s now going to automatically be included for groups of 200 or more.

– Basic Wi-Fi, with some limits, also going to be included as part of the basic package.

– The company also now has an interactive PDF sourcing guide to those 125 CRN properties, complemented by an interactive map with search-and-sort features, on the CRN website.

– Under development is an Event Experience Playbook, which, once finalized, will provide signature group experiences available in CRN hotel and resort destinations.

– Marriott, through its AV partner Encore, also is leveraging AI to make meetings more inclusive by offering closed-captioning and instant translation by Wordly. Also available now through Encore is Snapsight, an AI-powered real-time content summarization product that can analyze audio, presentations, surveys and other content and provide a digestible summary.

– Encore also is offering options-based selling to make it easier to scale up or down as needed at Marriott properties. Encore’s proposal tool, which uses an organization’s history combined with AI, will now summarize what used to be a 50-page quote down to just a few pages.

Learn more about Marriott’s CRN at conventionresortnetwork.com.

Hyatt

The Hyatt Mid-Size Convention Alliance recently announced some enhancements for its meeting and event planner clients. When groups book a meeting or event at two or more of the hotels in the alliance by December 31, 2026, for events held before December 31, 2029, they will receive special perks. For example, planners who book at two hotels during this timeframe will receive a 2% rooms revenue rebate and double World of Hyatt points. Those who book at three hotels earn a 3% rooms revenue rebate and triple World of Hyatt points. Groups that book four or more of the properties will receive a 4% rooms revenue rebate and quadruple World of Hyatt points for their events.

The downtown and convention hotels included in the collection, and the deal, include Grand Hyatt Nashville; Hyatt Regency Bellevue on Seattle’s East Side; Hyatt Regency Baltimore Inner Harbor; Hyatt Regency Columbus; Hyatt Regency Crystal City at Reagan National Airport; Hyatt Regency DFW International Airport; Hyatt Regency Houston; Hyatt Regency Jacksonville Riverfront; Hyatt Regency Phoenix; Hyatt Regency Portland at the Oregon Convention Center; Hyatt Regency Milwaukee; Hyatt Regency Minneapolis; Hyatt Regency Salt Lake City; Hyatt Regency San Antonio Riverwalk; and Hyatt Regency St. Louis at the Arch.

Caesars Entertainment

Caesars Entertainment has long championed wellness, offering a full-scale wellness center in Las Vegas — its largest employment sector — with access to doctors, nutritionists, a gym, and complimentary personal trainers. Then the company developed a wellness menu that, in addition to food and beverage, includes immersive activations such as sound baths, yin yoga, breathwork tea ceremonies and keynote speakers who are leaders in the wellness space.

Now the Caesars Entertainment National Meetings and Events team is expanding its commitment to delivering wellness options for its meetings and events clients beyond its wellness-focused event programming, wellness menus, Global Wellness Forum and recent nationwide wellness road show by launching a white paper on wellness for industry professionals.

“We introduced our wellness menus in October 2023, hosted our inaugural Wellness Forum in June 2024, and took our message on the road with the Wellness Roadshow in 2025. With wellness now a $6 billion — and rapidly growing — industry, we’re proud to be a thought leader in this initiative and a resource to all meeting planners,” said Kelly Gleeson Smith, Senior Vice President of Sales, Caesars Entertainment National Meetings & Events.

The new white paper includes data on the benefits of integrating wellness into events, a helpful FAQ sheet, and a sample agenda infused with wellness activations to inspire planners and demonstrate how easily wellness can be incorporated.

Download the wellness guide here.