Hotel Sourcing Improves Savings, Duty of Care and Traveler Experience

Situation

A new manufacturing client came to Fox World Travel without a corporate hotel program in place and was subsequently missing out on hotel savings and other benefits. The client’s travel manager, who was new to business travel management, did not have negotiating power, supplier relationships or technology to effectively manage a time-consuming procurement process to secure the best hotel rates for their organization. So, the client looked to Fox to help build a hotel program that would achieve savings, improve their duty of care and improve the traveler experience.

Solution

After consulting with the client, Fox proposed a fully managed hotel sourcing solution in-house to assist the client from start to finish. The key to this solution’s success was assigning a dedicated Fox project manager as the client’s advocate and consultant in managing all strategic planning and bid management activities, which included:

  • Project Management: Overseeing project timeline, milestones and deliverables and providing status updates.
  • Planning and Strategy: Conducting a detailed planning session which included analyzing hotel data, mapping hotels to the program destinations, making recommendations that align with the client’s travel policy and culture—and ultimately—establishing a comprehensive hotel solicitation list as part of the sourcing strategy.
  • Bid Management: Preparing the request for proposal (RFP) and managing the solicitation process through the automated Cvent sourcing tool. As the liaison between the client and the hotel suppliers, Fox managed everything from the RFP to the final contract and beyond, including a bid analysis with dashboard benchmarking reports, final recommendations, bid acceptance, declines and supplier negotiations.
  • Implementation and Rate Testing: The final contracted hotel rates were loaded into the Fox booking and reporting platform, followed by hotel rate auditing to ensure the client’s negotiated rates were accessible.

Discoveries

Since implementing their new hotel program, the client has seen an increase in hotel savings, including:

  • A savings of 12.8% off the published room rate.
  • A savings of $21.46 per room night.
  • An overall savings of 14.7% off their annual hotel spend.

Further, the duty of care initiatives improved, giving travelers access to hotels that made them feel comfortable and safe and providing the travel manager complete visibility of where their travelers were staying at any given time, in the event of an emergency.

In addition, to supplement the client’s new corporate hotel program, the Fox Hotel Discount Program offers travelers discounted rates and amenities to over 47,000 properties spanning 106 countries. Many participating hotels offer up to 20% off the best available rate and complimentary amenities such as Wi-Fi, breakfast and parking.

 

“From start to finish, the Fox Hotel Sourcing process was seamless, easy to understand and faster than my previous experience.” – Travel Manager/Executive Administrator