Hotel sourcing can seem daunting, but it needn’t be. The key to successful sourcing is preparation. Getting a clear view of your program’s past performance and establishing future goals from the outset means you can realize better savings and source the right properties to fit your program profile. Preparing for sourcing begins with understanding market conditions, internal drivers for travel, and specific needs across stakeholder groups. To fully refine your understanding, look at these three things:
- Historical performance: Dive into your data for the complete story of how your preferred hotels performed over time. How often are you actually getting your negotiated rate or better? Is the rate consistently available to travelers? Are extremely expensive properties lurking among your listings? Are travelers confused by this and making decisions that could be detrimental to company savings goals?
- Traveler sentiment: Does the property mix reflect traveler preferences and their feedback? Are they being expected to continue booking properties that performed poorly in the past?
- Sustainability: Are there key sustainability factors in your hotel selection?
In past years, hotel sourcing may have seemed like repeatedly ticking the same boxes in an established process and hoping for the best. Travel teams and stakeholders can change things by being better educated about the travel program’s strengths and opportunities, challenging historic rates that aren’t netting the best results and not hesitating to walk away from rates that don’t best serve the travel program’s success, traveler experiences and company goals.
For more information on BCD’s hotel solutions and innovative approach to sourcing, check out Stay by BCD Travel: https://ow.ly/TEJt50PV3Hb
Digging into the data: Things we didn’t expect to learn from hotel analytics
Many long-held approaches in managed hotel programs aren’t supported or proven by data. For example, do you avoid nonrestrictive non-refundable hotels rates in your program to save costs? What if we told you that there may not be a need to because only about 5% of hotel bookings are ever cancelled? Think about what that could mean for your program.
Now’s a good time to determine what’s working and what’s not. But first, there’s more you should know.
DIG INTO THE DATA
