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Follow our step-by-step guide to finding the best hotel booking solution for your company's accommodation needs. Gillian Upton explains all

WILL Sheeran isn’t your average procurement specialist, and his employer, Watford-based Taylor Woodrow, isn’t your average employer.
For one thing, Sheeran enjoys looking after the procurement of travel and doesn’t see it as a commodity that has to be driven to the lowest price. Secondly, Taylor Woodrow is something of an enlightened employer, favouring flexible working hours, staff empowerment and with a strong company culture of valuing its staff that runs through the fabric of the company.

“I feel that happiness breeds success,” says Sheeran. ”We have no micro management, just macro management.”

With this as a backdrop, Sheeran inherited a travel policy that wasn’t mandated. Embedded into it is a strong CSR message. “We take CSR very seriously,” says Sheeran. “A high number of workplace accidents are car related so, for example, we try to limit annual business mileage to 20,000 miles and promote rail travel.”

The company travel spend is in excess of £1million, split evenly between air, rail and hotel. The policy has set benchmark levels on hotel accommodation. But convenience often holds sway over cost, as in the preferred accommodation near its Watford headquarters. “Our biggest hotel usage is in Watford, but our preferred hotel is not the cheapest option due to location,” says Sheeran.

There are some 1,200 potential UK employees, their travel booked and managed by 30-plus PA/business assistants across the business. The implementation of a robust and easy to use online tool will free up their time allowing them to focus on more critical areas.

The PA to the MD, Laura Harrell – who is effectively the travel manager, but without the title – supported Sheeran in the tender process and handles the day-to-day communications with suppliers. Sheeran has the commercial responsibility, putting all contracts in place. Travel constitutes about five per cent of his role.

The company’s travel is largely domestic and project related – where it has projects is where the employees have to be. It decided to move away from corporate cards, so Taylor Woodrow put a bill-back arrangement in place so that employees would not have to settle their own hotel bills.

Sheeran inherited a full service agency as a one-stop-shop for rail, air and hotel bookings. FCm handled all travel but due to the decision around corporate cards Sheeran began the search for a supplier to handle his £400,000 annual hotel spend, and one specifically with a proven track record in bill-back service and good access to hotel inventory.

“I was not convinced that our current TMC could provide the right bill-back solution so went to the market to consider best in breed,” explains Sheeran. “We receive a good quality service from FCm. The decision to go to market was more to do with the billing process.” FCm are still providing the rail and air solution.
This is how Taylor Woodrow set about finding the right hotel booking solution for them.

Step 1: Do your homework. Sheeran researched and identified six potential HBAs that could provide bill-back through researching the market and talking to trade bodies such as the ITM. “We wanted to find a company where we would sit comfortably and be of value to them. It was also key that they could provide both an online and offline service and be able to work with the budget hotel chains.”

Step 2: Develop the tender document. “RFPs are an invisible cost,” reckons Sheeran, so he was keen to make the process as streamlined as possible. “Get the info you need, not what you think you need from an RFP” he says.

Sheeran got hold of sample RFPs for guidance, including one from the ITM website, and asked each of the six suppliers to tell him what they liked and disliked about the tender process. “That way, I could make the questions more relevant,” he explains. Sheeran whittled the list of suppliers from six to four; one withdrew because the business didn’t sit with their business model “and I respect that,” he says. He strongly advises to talk to suppliers before you send them a tender and make sure they want to get involved. “Basically, warm them up” he says.

Step 3: Send out the RFP. Sheeran then asked each of the four suppliers to participate in an online trial to test the user friendliness of their online systems. “We had four PAs, four laptops and four different live online systems to test,” says Sheeran. “Stakeholder buy-in is key to the success of the relationship,” he stresses. The suppliers were then asked to present their proposal to a panel of four. “Ask lots of questions and challenge everything.”

Step 4: Score the RFP. For Taylor Woodrow’s RFP, cost was only weighted at ten per cent. “The cost of the service provided by the hotel booking agent is less than five per cent of the amount spent on hotel accommodation. Therefore, I wanted to focus on customer service, the online booking tool and the proposal,” Sheeran explains.

Hotelscene came out on top with its home-owned, designed and built Corporate Xtranet online tool, against everything except cost, where they came second cheapest. “The cost model is such that a telephone booking is twice the cost of an online booking,” says Sheeran, “so our winning supplier had to have an easy-to-use online product.”

His advice is not to focus on cheapest hotel price all the time. “Often there are add-ons like poor location, onerous booking conditions and breakfast to account for,” he warns.

Step 5: Check out the set-up of the potential supplier. Sheeran visited the company’s call centre in Bristol to check their set-up and ensure it matched his own company's require-ments. “We don’t need a gold-plated service but we need it to be efficient, effective and seamless,” he explains.

Step 6: Award the contract and incorporate all the service levels you require, such as picking up calls after so many rings, outlining the formal complaints procedure, staging quarterly meetings to review progress, and so on. Taylor Woodrow awarded the contract to Hotelscene on February 1 this year and it went live on April 1 2008. It now benefits from last-room availability on the majority of hotel contracts, preferred rates at 58 hotels (up from 27 before) and commissionable rates, where previously there were nett rates, at no added cost. Hotelscene returns all the commissions to Taylor Woodrow, minus a service collection fee.

Step 7: Give feedback to the supplier who did, and those who didn’t, make it. “It’s a key area,” says Sheeran. “It means showing them the respect that’s due. Point out their shortcomings and they’ll appreciate it.” Some buyers, he warns, are too arrogant to undertake this, “and that’s the wrong way to be.”

8Follow up with a thorough implemen-tation plan including training and communicating the changes. Hotelscene presented at the company’s Secretarial Forum and trained travel bookers on its online system. Taylor Woodrow printed user guides and placed the information on the company intranet. Hotelscene also produced a list of tips for getting the best out of the online system, such as using the post-code instead of a town when making a booking, and for travellers to always take their confirm-ation number with them when they travel as this explains the bill-back arrangement.

“It’s all about communication; getting people onboard, getting them involved with suppliers and making them understand the benefits of what we’re trying to do” says Sheeran. There were a few teething problems – “as you would expect,” says Sheeran – but they were all small issues and all dealt with quickly.

He is satisfied that Taylor Woodrow is best in breed and has the advantage of tapping into better hotel inventory, good MI at the click of a button and online adoption that has moved from 15 to 50 per cent on hotels in the first four weeks. The target is for 70 per cent within three months – which Hotelscene believes will be achieved – and 80 per cent by the end of 2009.

Nick Hurrell, sales and marketing director of Hotelscene, is happy with progress to date. The company conducted a full review of existing rates, then took the following action: “We negotiated last room availability at three of their key properties; we turned net rates into commissionable at three other properties, effectively increasing the potential for commission share return to the client; we added seven more hotels in key cities onto their programme, creating an improved geographical spread of properties across the UK; and worked with the client to identify key project locations where they anticipate increasing volume in 2008, and ensured that relevant properties within their budget are available in each location.

“This activity resulted in an average saving of almost £3 per night nationwide.” says Hurrell. “Average rate is a key measure of our effectiveness, and we needed to do that as early as possible.” Future goals are to lower the out of London rate and beat inflation.

“£5 less on 4,000 bookings is a £20,000 saving,” Sheeran points out.

Has the company saved money? “I expect to drive value by having a better hotel programme in place and a robust tools to help manage the booking process” he says. His advice to others setting out on a similar project is to “understand what your drivers are. Ask, ‘what is my business need?’ Is it offline, so you need a company with good customer service set-up, or is it online? “Remember that sales guys will tell you what you want to hear. Talk to the proposed project manager about the product, not the sales guy” he advises.

“We’ve got what we wanted,” says Sheeran; “a bill-back service that was proven and greater access to both GDS and non-GDS inventory. Hotelscene has a three-year contract and as long as they’re performing well they’ll have it renewed.”

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