Added value through hotel and meetings programme management.
With a legacy as hotel booking specialists and managing over £340m global hotel spend, we leverage our relationships and scale to secure competitive price and value.
Whilst delivering an award-winning hotel and meetings management programme for a British multinational manufacturer over 15 years, we have also driven a strong performance of savings and strategic program management. But how?
Suppliers
246
Countries
33
Locations
174
Hotels
333
Savings
£355K
Renegotiation saving increase year-on-year
67%
Compliance to programme
85%
Objectives.
With over 50% of its 34,000 UK employees travelling and high demand for hotels Tuesday – Thursday (often in locations with low supply), this complex requirement needed the right hotel at the right price – each and every time.
We also needed to align this against policy boundaries and keep costs down.
We continue to deliver savings by using our expertise to focus on supplier negotiations for key customer locations. For example, as part of the 2020 hotel RFP, we processed 449 hotels, engaged with 246 suppliers (including 68 independent properties) and accepted 278 UK and 55 overseas hotels onto the final program across 174 locations and 33 countries.
We renegotiated a saving exceeding £355K in this year alone. We beat the overall market forecast of 0.85%, as the overall rate increased by 0.2%, so their rate increase was 76% lower than PwC’s forecast. Plus, we protect the customer’s negotiated rates from yield management drivers using our proprietary intelligent allocation management system, which holds 203 rooms daily to meet the customer’s
demand profile.
Ann Thomas
Strategic Account Manager, Agiito
Solution.
Despite this being a mature hotel program, we faced the challenge of balancing the price, availability, quality and safety in the sourcing and negotiations every year.
Our powerful venue and rates sourcing platform enabled us to benchmark different rates and
audit the negotiations.
Results.
With 30% non-GDS and 18%+ bookings placed into independent properties; our richer rate and supply content at the point of sale optimised contract compliance. We held or reduced rates at 120 properties (36%). The customer’s rate increase was just 0.2% - 76% lower than PwC forecasted (0.85%).
By automating the RFP process, our quick, efficient and fully auditable process collects and negotiates preferred accommodation pricing, whilst evaluating and scoring qualifying hotels against agreed criteria. This platform accesses the full market, so the customer also benefits from non-GDS rates, including independent properties and guesthouses.
Our Strategic Account Manager consulted with accommodation category specialists to review the programme and traveller compliance, source hotels that balance price, availability, quality and safety for their preferred supplier list, negotiate rates, added value extras and terms, proactively analyse requirements and influence better behaviours that challenge the demand for travel.