Leveraging the expertise of your travel management company can significantly enhance how you measure the success of your corporate hotel program.
To achieve optimal savings, it’s essential to have seasoned professionals negotiating with hotel suppliers. This expertise is particularly valuable during peak times for requests for proposals (RFPs), allowing you to take advantage of market fluctuations and over-supply conditions. STAY CIRCLE’s dedicated account management and supplier relations teams bring extensive experience and strong supplier partnerships to the table, helping you create corporate hotel programs that optimize your hotel program and maximize savings while delivering exceptional value.
This blog provides an in-depth look at strategies for assessing and optimizing the success of a corporate hotel program, emphasizing the critical role of data-driven insights, strategic partnerships, and continuous improvement to maximize value and savings.
Optimizing your hotel program
STAY CIRCLE’s account management team curates tailored hotel programs for each customer, combining their preferred, frequently booked properties with options from STAY CIRCLE’s global hotel program to enhance overall value.
Most customers benefit from STAY CIRCLE’s global hotel rates; however, those with high, concentrated spending in specific locations may require customized solutions. This flexible approach is never one-size-fits-all and adapts to each customer’s unique business needs and objectives. Through collaboration and strategic assessment, STAY CIRCLE’s account managers ensure that hotel programs align with customers’ goals and optimize their hotel spend.
- Analyze the accommodation supply chain: Understanding current supply levels and consumer demand helps determine available rates during the contracting period.
- Review booking trends: Analyze data on booking patterns, such as peak travel times, length of stay, and locations. This information can help refine the hotel program to better meet demand and identify potential cost-saving opportunities.
- Reassess hotel rate caps: Unprecedented demand in certain areas may require revisiting partnerships with previously preferred hotels to ensure they remain cost-effective.
- Compare average daily rates (ADR): Comparing the average daily rates to the industry city averages and per diems to assess savings opportunities or savings achieved.
- Consider the broader travel scope: Including meetings, groups, and extended stays not only enhances buying power but also aids in travel compliance.
- Forecast room night volumes: Reviewing and predicting achievable room night volumes based on current demand trends informs more strategic negotiations.
- Consolidate for greater power: Consolidating room nights can increase negotiating power and enhance overall savings. Having too many preferred suppliers will “drown out” the best offers and decrease savings potential.
- Leverage STAY CIRCLE’s Global Hotel Program: providing value through global buying power and to customers in markets where they may not have volume-driven business.
- Maximize content and choice: Allowing for wider hotel content options, including platforms like Booking.com and Expedia to ensure travelers and travel bookers have access to maximum choice.
- Incorporate dynamic rates: Where traditional corporate negotiated rates are not competitive, incorporating dynamic rates (discount off Best Available Rate) to maximize budgets.
- Increase hotel attachment, reduce leakage and risk: Ensuring bookings are made through the travel program which promotes usage of the preferred hotels and supports customer risk management and duty of care initiatives.
- Enable stakeholder engagement: Regularly involve key travel stakeholders in discussions about program performance to ensure alignment with broader organizational goals.
By employing these strategies and focusing on data-driven insights with the support and expertise of your account manager, you can effectively enhance the success of your hotel program by optimizing your hotel spend, ensuring it aligns with your organization’s financial goals.
How can ROI be measured to demonstrate hotel program success
There are several metrics that you can use to measure the success of a hotel program and what value is placed on each metric may be different from company to company based on size, industry, what they deem valuable and the goals they are trying to achieve from their hotel program. You can work with your STAY CIRCLE account manager to determine what metrics you will measure your hotel program on.
- Cost savings: Evaluate the total cost savings achieved through negotiated rates compared to standard market rates and industry benchmarks. Track discounts received over time to assess the effectiveness of negotiations.
- Preferred rates: Measure how many travelers are booking within the preferred hotel program versus out-of-policy bookings. High compliance typically indicates the program’s success and high utilization of preferred properties usually translates to better-negotiated rates and higher overall savings.
- Traveler satisfaction: Gather feedback from travelers regarding their hotel experiences. High satisfaction rates can indicate a well-structured hotel program that meets traveler needs. And, happy travelers will often translate into productive travelers which has great benefits for business growth.
- Regular reporting: Establish a reporting framework that allows for consistent monitoring of KPIs over time, facilitating ongoing analysis and adjustments to the program as needed.
Focusing on these metrics will provide a clearer picture of your hotel program’s success, helping you identify strengths and areas for improvement. This approach ensures that your strategies are aligned to deliver value to both the organization and its travelers.
5 key takeaways to elevate your hotel program’s success
- Leverage TMC expertise and data: Collaborating with a TMC like STAY CIRCLE, particularly for data insights, supports a more accurate view of traveler behavior, including booking patterns and incidental spending. These insights are essential for identifying savings and optimizing program value.
- Strategic supplier negotiation: Skilled negotiation, especially during peak RFP periods, is crucial for securing competitive rates. STAY CIRCLE’s account management and supplier relations teams bring experience and partnerships that drive advantageous deals by aligning customer needs with market conditions.
- Customizable hotel programs: STAY CIRCLE’s approach is tailored, incorporating both your business’s preferred properties and STAY CIRCLE’s global hotel program, which provides flexibility and ensures the program aligns with your specific needs and objectives, such as cost savings and room volume concentration.
- Optimizing key areas: STAY CIRCLE’s strategies for optimizing hotel programs include analyzing booking trends, rate caps, ADRs, supply chain demand, consolidating room nights, and broadening content availability through platforms like Booking.com. This is a strategic approach to balance cost savings with traveler satisfaction and compliance.
- Measuring ROI and success: ROI measurement is based on metrics like cost savings, preferred rates compliance, traveler satisfaction, and regular reporting on KPIs. High compliance with preferred properties and traveler satisfaction are highlighted as indicators of a successful program, enhancing both financial and operational goals.
