C3X 2017: Boost Your Campus Engagement
Last week’s C3X Annual Conference and Expo in Colorado Springs was such an exciting and informative experience for the Engine team. After meeting with some of the leaders of 700 higher education institutions and NACAS Business Partners, we walked away with a better understanding of the challenges and creative solutions impacting today’s campuses.
But where did we fit in? Interestingly, many people first thought Engine was an on-campus hotel management company. Instead, we’re a private hotel booking platform that offers exclusive wholesale rates at 150,000+ hotels, both on college campuses and beyond worldwide. Our users save an average of 26% off public rates through completely free memberships, making it an appealing tool for any budget-conscious traveler or institution. It was exciting to have such a warm reception from attendees interested in enhancing their campus engagement and auxiliary services with something like this!
During the four-day conference and expo, we learned a lot about how we can better support educational institutions and their campus-wide communities. Here are our key takeaways:
Engine can be a new and exclusive offering for staff, students, and their families.
We saw the greatest interest from institutions wanting to offer a unique travel perk to their campus community. Specifically, many shared that staff members would greatly benefit from a centralized hotel booking platform that saved them money on every trip, from academic conferences to out-of-state recruiting events. Students would also welcome savings while traveling during school breaks or even for weekend excursions while studying abroad (we have hotels in 185+ countries!).
For students’ parents and families, Engine is a fantastic booking tool for move-in and move-out weekends, as well as homecoming and family days. Plus, Engine offers educational institutions a 2% revenue share on all bookings made by their staff, students, and their families. All of these groups can benefit from Engine’s savings, which would, in turn, help the university as a whole!
Most universities and colleges are missing a travel perk like this.
We weren’t surprised that many of the educational institutions represented at the conference had never heard of us. It was clear that within the campus engagement industry, a travel perk such as ours really isn’t being taken advantage of yet.
However, with Engine, you have the unique opportunity to be one of the first in higher education to do so. With no service costs, unlimited free accounts, and a quarterly revenue share, your university can both enrich campus engagement while creating a net new revenue stream. We at Engine want to help enhance the experiences of students and faculty on campuses across the country through more affordable travel.
