HOTEL DISTRIBUTION CASE STUDY: Travel buyer, aerospace manufacturer
long as the price is within budget and book- ings are made via our TMC. This provides our security team with adequate detail to cover the vital duty of care, traveller tracking and spend visibility, permitting future rate and concession negotiations,” says Robinson.
MAINTAINING PRIORITIES An ACTE/HRS survey of travel managers showed that duty-of-care is top priority to 94 per cent of respondents, followed by cost reduction. But if only 60 per cent of hotel bookings are compliant, that drives a coach and horses through any buyer’s priorities. “Travel managers have an increasing-
ly complex task,” says Green. “They are getting solutions from suppliers and there is pressure internally to keep travellers happy – and that is a key measurement. Travellers have much more of a voice, so it is very important to be using the latest technology. Online booking tools help keep control and are convenient for them.” Enter the end-to-end solution: “It helps
to have expertise at the beginning, when you are sourcing, so you are selecting the right hotels, negotiating the right pricing and you are able to bundle groups of hotels and locations,” he says. “It’s often done in- house – it’s a critical part of providing a full solution.” It is also vital to audit rates, something
that travel buyers tend to outsource because it is such a labour-intensive task. Ideally, this is done immediately after a contract has been awarded to weed out mistakes and then checked regularly to ensure they have not dropped out nor been amended by providers. “Why go to the trouble – and cost – of negotiating rates, if they’re not audited for accuracy?” says Jef Robinson. “Any organi- sation should be sure what they agree with hotels is reviewed. If not, then it’s entirely possible that the annual hotel RFPs are effectively a paperwork exercise offering little tangible benefit. The flip side would be not to negotiate rates and simply accept best available rate at the time of booking.”
120 BBT January/February 2018
WE HAVE A PREFERRED HOTEL PROGRAMME for 700 properties worldwide, mostly in Europe, and we do the RFP through Lanyon. We do a two-year programme and are looking at other options for the next one, which starts in the middle of 2018 – we might involve the TMC more, a third party or maybe not have a preferred programme at all. We are looking at all the possibilities. With some of the main chains, we have a global discount. We also use hotel booking agency HRS, so when travellers look at the online booking tool, it shows the GDS and HRS rates; and there is also the option for them to phone the TMC to get the same rate. One reason we use GDS and HRS is to cover both major chains and independent properties and the rates are sometimes different; we can find that HRS rates are better. It is confusing because a hotel can show twice in the booking tool and a traveller will ask why, especially if the rate is the same. The tool is configured so that the lowest rate comes up first – partly by rate, but if you are staying at Charles de Gaulle Airport, it won’t show hotels in the middle of the city even if there is a cheaper hotel there and a more expensive one at the airport. It will show the cheapest preferred hotel first. We have created a programme called Hotel Attachment. We measure how many travellers book a hotel at the same time as the flight. It used to be around 60 per cent and now it’s 80 per cent – that is one of
Ultimately, a TMC and self-booking
tools combine to help travel managers keep control of their programme and track of their travellers. This does not necessarily mean ring-fencing content to the point that, although negotiated rates are protected, the traveller is dissatisfied with the choice. “Our role as a TMC is to provide travellers
and corporations with access to content that not only meets their needs but ensures traveller safety,” says Pauline Houston, senior director at American Express GBT. “Non-GDS content is growing, but it is
our measures of compliance, so we know where they are, but that does not necessarily mean they are booking a preferred hotel. This rate has gone up over
18 months because we have communicated to travellers what they should be doing and put controls on their expenses: if they are claiming a hotel cost that wasn’t booked through our process, it will be paid but it will be questioned.
Our TMC is ensuring travellers
are aware they should be booking hotels through the online booking tool; and when they book a flight using the tool, it automatically tells them they then need to book a hotel because they are staying one night or more. They could book through our
programme in a city where we have no preferred hotels. In Leeds, for example, they could book pretty much any hotel from £50 to £120 and that would fall into the 80 per cent. We have a city cap of £120 for the UK. If they booked £180, they must explain why. Many of our travellers – the other 20 per cent – are booking directly with hotels, possibly because the properties have offers for booking direct. Also, many always stay in the same place and when a city is sold out, they can get a room if they know the general manager and phone the hotel direct. Included in the 20 per cent are those going to conferences – if the hotel is included in the conference fee, it would not go through our process.
still the smaller part of most corporations’ accommodation requirements. “Travel managers want to control costs,
ensure travellers’ safety and comfort, and obtaining data helps them to optimise programmes, pricing and policies. It’s important to understand why a traveller is booking out of policy – is it location, price or experience? This can guide and influence policy decisions.” Travel managers still have many ways to
control their programme – it just requires some creativity.
BUYINGBUSINESSTRAVEL.COM
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