BENCHMARKING
SOME HOTELS HAVE TEN ROOM TYPES IN ONE HOTEL… YOU CANNOT COMPARE ‘A PRICE’ ANYMORE
Benjamin Park, internation- al director of procurement and travel at Parexel, meanwhile argues the main challenge is more the lack of transparency. “Today, some hotels have ten room types in one hotel, some with continental breakfast or basic wifi, and others with more included. You cannot compare ‘a price’ anymore as they manage to get away with no standards and added complex bundles,” he says. As well as costs, travel buyers can gauge how their policy looks compared with other companies. Greeley Koch, executive director at ACTE, notes there many infor- mal groups that exist where buyers get together and discuss those aspects that don’t involve confidential financials. One travel buyer who works at a government department in the UK told BBT she has joined an informal “United
THE BUYER’S VIEW: WHO WILL CREATE THE GDS 4.0?
Benjamin Park, international director of procurement and travel, Parexel “Dynamic pricing is the future, as we will negotiate
less and less by hotel. Dynamic pricing will also become even more dynamic, with hourly rates based on many data points. The challenge for us buyers will be
getting access through different channels, including direct connects or aggregators such as
booking.com, for more hotel content and better prices. Procurement will then become a technology partner;
we will use a single interface to a platform to get as much content and different rates into one system. Basically, who can create the GDS 4.0, which collects
all data and normalises it, and displays it as a user-friendly shopping experience?”
buyingbusinesstravel.com
Nations Travel Managers” group. Their overall spend was relatively small with its bias towards economy class travel, their TMC was not able to provide adequate benchmarking due to its non-traditional destinations, so the group was the perfect place to share notes with other non-private sector buyers. ACTE, meanwhile, runs events that bring buyers together in a similar way. “There are always different things that the buyer wants to look at,” says Koch. “At a higher level, its policy. I was with a group of buyers re- cently and they said they needed to remain competitive. If you offer business class only for long-haul flights over six hours, but a rival says five hours, you lose that talent attraction. “We see a lot of informal benchmarking when there’s no commercial sensitivity, no anti-trust laws coming into play,” he adds.
THE SUSTAINABILITY FACTOR Michelle Taft, managing director at consultancy Apensia, agrees there are many areas outside of tra- ditional procurement that can be benchmarked. One of the most common is sustainability, and there are many carbon offsetting tools on the market. Yet with wellbeing climbing up the corporate agenda, some TMCs are also now offering sophisticated data on how wellbeing impacts the overall organisation, staff and its bottom line – which could be an “exciting driver” for
2018 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 77
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