3 Insider Best Practices for Booking Corporate Hotel Stays

As a busy travel manager, you are tasked with dealing with the late but ugly effects of out-of-policy booking. One of them is low hotel attachment rates on your booking system.

When a traveler books a hotel separately from their flight, your organization doesn’t have the critical data it needs to know the traveler’s whereabouts in times of crisis. Not to mention, the negotiated rates you’ve established with your preferred vendors aren’t being leveraged.

Based on a study by Phocuswright, most booking platforms suffer hotel attachment rates lower than 50%. And needless to say, they do suffer dire consequences. Specifically, as this rate drops, it puts a burden on a business’s Duty of Care.

Therefore, you must make it a priority to improve your hotel attachment rate, meaning you have to reduce the number of rogue bookings as much as possible.

If you already have your own booking system for your employees, ask yourself:

1. Is it working effectively for our travel policy?
2. What types of processes is our system letting us streamline?
3. Are we getting the best deals through our system?

You can always improve your booking system by investing in corporate travel services from a TMC. Generally, a Travel Management Company can help you implement a more effective booking system for your employees, with the objective of managing and preventing contingencies, instead of just streamlining processes.

To get started, you can start making improvements on your own. That’s why we’ve compiled three insider tips on booking corporate hotel stays.

1. Find a TMC with access to the best content

One of the reasons for low hotel attachment rates is when the employees don’t find hotel deals that suit their tastes. Maybe they are craving a unique and pleasant hotel experience in the heart of the city—not a moderately priced place on the outskirts.

As their travel manager, you want them to book everything in one place, adhere to your company’s travel policy, and still have a great time. At one point in time, achieving these three objectives wasn’t possible through your booking platform. Thankfully, that’s no longer the case.

With the help of an expert TMC, they can cater to your employees’ preferences, help improve your booking experience, and adhere to your travel policy.

All of this is possible thanks to a TMC’s wide network of top hotel providers with the best rates. And given that they also know your company’s travel policy by heart, you can rest assured your employees will be satisfied with their options.

What’s more, your employees won’t search back and forth between different booking apps for the best deals. Since the TMC provides you with an all-encompassing app, your employees can access all the content they need and want. This also ensures travelers aren’t distracted by the dozens of ads or irrelevant content that appears on consumer-type sites.

With this clear-cut communication and data-backed curation in a TMC’s app, there are no foggy areas to navigate during your employees’ search. They’ll have a laser-like focus on the best hotel stay deals around the globe. And this is just during their search for deals and rates!

If you haven’t partnered with a TMC yet, find the one with the best access to the unbeatable hotel deals. Adelman, for instance, can provide you with incredible corporate booking rates and deals from booking.com and AirBnB on our booking app, Ava or Adelman Virtual Assistant.

2. Let a TMC handle negotiations

In the long run, you want to book the best deals and save as much money as possible. But negotiating is likely not the most sought-after task on your to-do list. The good news is that when it comes to negotiations, TMCs have it down to a science. With a TMC, you’re hiring a team of seasoned experts that live and breathe hotel trends and rates every day.

Imagine getting first-hand access to that insider insight and more— wouldn’t you be glad to provide more value to your company?

In the end, it’s their welfare overseas that you’re going to protect, so don’t hesitate to take a step forward.

Here are five benefits of having a TMC do your negotiating for you:

• Concealed fees in canceling and modifying your reservations – A TMC’s relationships with international airlines and hotels means you won’t have to go through hoops and pay extra fees just to cancel because of an emergency.
• More contingency plans for you and your staff – With a TMC’s wide network of providers and travel technology partners, they can easily supply you with real-time travel data. You can use this information to create better, insightful emergency plans for your traveling employees.
• Security for your traveling teams – TMCs are better equipped with technology that will help you track, manage, and boost your employees’ travel experience — from searching for hotel deals to finding activities through the TMC’s app.
• Added value for your employees – Do your travelers have special requests such as vegan meals, unlimited WiFi connection, or VIP lounge access? A great TMC can cater to your every whim given their extensive list of secured partnerships with hotel providers.
• Variety and accessibility of transportation options – If you let TMCs negotiate booking deals for you, they can also provide you with information about the city’s best mode of transportation, routes, and travel services.

3. Work with a TMC to increase hotel attachment

Increasing hotel attachment is key to travel and expense management. Improving this rate helps not only your bottom line, but it also ensures the safety of your staff.

In fact, with a high attachment rate, you can guarantee a faster and more effective response to any crisis or inconvenience.

It’s important to note that employees don’t always ditch their booked hotels on your app because of selfish reasons. Perhaps there was an emergency in their original reservation, which made them transfer to another one nearby. That’s why you need to track their activity, communicate with them consistently, and ultimately, learn the reason they ditched the hotel.

That is why you need a TMC that is equipped with tools to increase and sustain a high attachment rate. Specifically, a TMC can help with this via time-saving apps, services, travel automation, and solutions.

For example, Adelman offers travel managers a two-way SMS technology through SAP Concur Locate. This will let the managers actively converse with their employees anywhere around the world, instantly providing them with real-time solutions in case of crises.

In the end, your employees’ welfare and happiness are top priorities, but staying aligned with your corporate budget is high on the list as well. If you’re looking for a corporate travel agency to improve your hotel booking process, contact Adelman Travel today. We’ll work with you to improve your booking experience and increase your hotel attachment rate.