Jan Jacobsen is global accommodation manager at AIG. He will be sharing his advice on looking beyond rate, location and channel in accommodation programmes with Mike Prager, Xaveer Fluitman of Booking.com for Business and Daniel Finkel of Egencia at London Business Travel Summit.
What's the main change you've seen in your hotel programme over the last year?
We've built a service apartment programme with its own OBT which is sourced and contracted the exact same way as the hotel programme through an electronic sourcing process. This has given us a bigger selection of a diverse product offering under one umbrella with a hotel programme (bedrooms without kitchen/kitchenette facilities) and an apartment programme (bedrooms with kitchen/kitchenette facilities) side by side.
Also we implemented a bot functionality globally that can audit thousand hotel transactions against policy. With the volume efficiency gained from this single automation alone it has helped ensure the best in class rate at all times and better manage compliance. The investment has resulted in increased savings achieved by 47% YOY.
Have you changed anything in your negotiations? What and why?
It is now mandatory 24 months programme globally in all destinations.
What do you make of the new 48-hour cancellation rules, will it really impact anything?
These new policies apply to public rates and not the contracted corporate rates so no impact.
What do you think will have the biggest effect on hotel programmes in 2018?
Enhancements of technology with a lot of new vendors in the market are allowing better performance management of hotel programmes.