Choice Hotels Australasia, one of Australia’s largest hotel franchise groups, hosted a sports lunch forum in Australia’s sporting capital, Melbourne, to engage the sporting community and celebrate its grassroots travel program, Choice Sports.
Held in the MCG’s Premiership Room, the event was hosted by Hamish McLachlan and featured industry heavyweight and former Chief Executive Officer of the AFL, Andrew Demetriou and former Geelong Football Club captain, Cameron Ling.
Over 100 guests from high profile sporting clubs including Little Athletics Australia, Football Federation Victoria, Lifesaving Victoria and PGA Australia enjoyed a three course lunch and Q&A with the sporting stars as they shared their career insights and experiences in Australian sport.
Aileen Cobern, Choice Hotels General Manager – Distribution and Revenue, said the sports community was very important to the hotel franchise group and that Choice Hotels had launched the Choice Sports program to help clubs better manage their accommodation costs.
“We are proud supporters of Australia’s vast network of sporting clubs and this event gave us the opportunity to celebrate the program, thank those sporting organisations who are part of our program and welcome new clubs,” she said.
“Our guests got a real kick out of listening to Hamish, Andrew and Cameron as they shared their years of experience, achievements and challenges in sport,” said Cobern.
Choice Sports was launched in 2013 to enable sporting clubs throughout Australia and New Zealand to create a new revenue stream for their club whilst also providing their members and communities with additional benefits in the form of discounted accommodation. The program offers a 15 per cent discount on the best available rate for accommodation and for each booking made a rebate is paid back to the registered club from Choice Hotels.
The initiative provides sporting clubs with the discounted rates when making group accommodation bookings for team travel around the country. Additionally, Choice Sports provides the discount to club officials, members, supporters and family members who are travelling to watch their club compete or are just heading away on a holiday or short break. There are currently over 200 associations who are members of Choice Sports with the potential to reach over 2,000 clubs and over 100,000 members.
Sports clubs can become part of the Choice Sports program, via an online application form at https://sports.choicehotels.com.au/