Buyers have been advised to cut down the amount of RFPs sent to hotels and instead concentrate on driving down costs at key properties.
Leighton Simms, EMEA travel manger for technology firm Cisco Systems, said that his company had halved the number of RPFs that it sends out, so that it could focus on its most important hotels in top destinations.
“We are negotiating rates in static locations which are the key places that we travel to,” said Simms during a session at this week’s Business Travel Show. “Reduce RFPs and zero in on your key cities and properties to drive deeper discounts
“We have been trying to change the conversation with suppliers to get away from market share commitments to look at revenue growth instead, which we then use to drive discounts.”
Simms said the company also tried to make sure that hotels guaranteed last room availability and rates also included services such as wifi.
“Cisco has made several acquisitions and is still growing – we try to leverage spend to get the best discounts,” he added. “We also negotiate high volume rates separately from the rest of our programme to maximise savings and eliminate overlap.”
Nigel Turner, director of programment management for Carlson Wagonlit Travel, added that buyers needed to cover their key airline routes as part of their travel buying strategy.
“It’s important to have deals on those routes,” he said. “Relationships are important especially when things go wrong. It’s about how much money you spend with the supplier and feeding that relationship.
“The challenge is that there are so many fares to one destination and so many different route codes.
“It’s important to have last room availability for hotels and a high allocation so you are getting the maximum amount of content at that price. “