BUYER'S GUIDE
BY CATHERINE CHETWYND
How does a non-profit organisation run an effective accommodation programme? Our travel buyer talks us through his programme, and explains how an ethos of ‘doing what’s right’ can help compliance
THE RED-FACE TEST
ROD RICHARDSON HAS BEEN TRAVEL MANAGER for biomedical research charity the Wellcome Trust for ten years. The London- based organisation provides more than £800 million a year in funding to a wide range of healthcare projects and initiatives around the world.
1
FOR GREATEST FLEXIBILITY, try to blend negotiated rates and best-on-the-day. I have a number of hotels, mainly in
the London area, for which I have nego- tiated rates. But where we don’t have the volume for that, we have best-on-the- day, which we purchase via HRS. There will always be occasions when you will find a rate on offer at one of your preferred hotels. Ask them how they feel about you using the lower rate. I find they are fine about it – that comes down to the rela- tionship. Our travellers do not have a self-booking tool for accommodation – my team books and pays for all hotels, with about 80 per cent going through HRS and the rest via the global distribu- tion system or online directly.
2
COMBINE YOUR HOTEL AND MEETINGS SPEND. Most of our conferences and events team’s spend comes through
my team, so that we can combine our meetings accommodation with day-to- day business use in negotiations. Any hotels you use should be keen to provide a good group rate to attract business. Our properties add our event figures into my overall spend for the year when it comes to negotiating business. It works very well.
3
MONITOR COMPLIANCE. It helps that we don’t offer a self-booking process to travellers for hotels, but we
26 BBT MARCH/APRIL 2016 “We have around 650 travellers based in the UK, plus a
large number of inbound travellers from across the world to attend meetings and conferences,” Richardson says. “The hotel programme is largely UK based and I manage it with our HBA [hotel booking agent] HRS.”
do have a bit of leakage – for example, if someone is attending a conference on a package that includes accommoda- tion. I am provided with a monthly report that details all leaked spend. Controlling hotels is notoriously diffi- cult and there will always be an element of leakage.
4
MANDATE WHERE YOU HAVE PREFERRED RATES and where you don’t, and cap spend according to the destination.
The Wellcome Trust has a value-based travel policy and our travellers can manage their budget the way they want. If someone chooses a higher rate, it would just be recorded on an exception report. Value comes into it because, as an em- ployee of the Wellcome Trust, we expect people to think about what is right for the organisation. We have the ‘red-face test’: employees ask themselves, if this expenditure was made known to my colleagues, would I be red-faced about the costs? If the answer is yes, then maybe they should think about whether it’s the right thing to do. It works: we introduced that a year ago and our compliance levels are still in the 90s.
5
CONSTRUCT YOUR POLICY AROUND YOUR BUSINESS NEEDS and communicate changes. A lot of corporates
have had issues concerning Airbnb because of the lack of duty-of-care. We have adjusted policy by including serviced
apartments for the first time this year to capture the Airbnb spend. We tell travel- lers that as an alternative to Airbnb, we can offer you a great serviced apartments company and we will book it for you and pay for it on your behalf.
6 7 8
LOYALTY PROGRAMMES CAN BE USED TO INCREASE COM- PLIANCE. At the moment, we have a corporate loyalty
scheme for air travel but not hotels. We are looking into a corporate hotel scheme and will roll it out to staff that stay at hotels within the programme.
MI [MANAGEMENT INFORMA- TION] IS ESSENTIAL and should be supplied by your travel management company
and/or HBA. We get great MI from HRS and from Airplus, our card company. We channel all hotel spend through the card and capture lots of rich data from that one statement and can drill down into any invoices.
WORK WITH YOUR AGENCY SUPPLIERS TO NEGOTIATE RATES – they should be able to leverage their spend on
your behalf. My HRS account manager used HRS’s buying power to get some of my rates down. As our programme stands now, it is very healthy and contains something for everybody. Do not add too many properties, because you risk spread- ing the programme too thinly.
BUYINGBUSINESSTRAVEL.COM
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124