Every company, large or small, should have a clearly defined set of policies on business travel and for many reasons including efficiency, cost control, employee safety and comfort. If you don’t already have one, I recommend that you create one (you can download a template). Get it agreed with the relevant people in your organisation, post it on your intranet, and communicate its existence.

I was delighted to take part in a Spend Matters webinar recently, hosted by its Managing Editor, Peter Smith.

Another record month for the business-focused hotel booking platform…

Hotel loyalty programmes have been around now for 35 years. Holiday Inns introduced the first programme way back in February 1983, had a brief change of mind in 1986, and then reinstated it. Marriott introduced theirs in November 1983, and can therefore claim to have the longest continuously running programme. Nowadays, virtually everybody in the business, from budget hotel chains to elite luxury brands, are fighting to win your loyalty.

This is the third in a series of posts taking a broad view of the value you can unlock when booking hotels. Part 3: Added value for the finance function Roomex enables you to reduce hotel costs savings that go straight to your company’s bottom line. Which is already great news for company finances but it’s just the start. Based on our experience of working with hundreds of successful companies in a broad range of sectors, we calculate that Roomex will deliver up to £64,000 (or /$) on an annual spend of £100,000. The table sets out the savings and the monetised values: Let’s now look at these Roomex service features in detail: Direct Savings on Hotel Rates Roomex will get you the best rate by accessing 35 sources of supply. Or your own negotiated rate if better. Typically, this delivers savings of 15% or more. No Fees In contrast to agencies and travel management companies, there are no fees or commissions whenever you book through Roomex. And there is no signing-on fee or contract. Time Saved Searching and Booking Roomex immediately finds the best offers, so you do not need to search. This typically cuts the average time to make a booking by a factor of ten (e.g. from ten minutes to one minute). Admin time that adds up over the course of a year. Consolidation of Hotel Spend on a Single Invoice All your hotel spend is consolidated on a single invoice, with all necessary information including your internal cost codes, at the end of the month saving hours spent processing individual invoices. Time Saved Contracting / Dealing with Hotels Roomex’s expert team of negotiators deal with hotels every day to secure collective group pricing. Policy Compliance Control Your travel expense rules are loaded into your personalised Roomex application, thereby ensuring compliance with minimum time-consuming manual processes required. Control over Spend via Single Gateway With your entire hotel spend going through Roomex, you have complete financial control over travel operating expenses. You can identify savings, average cost per night etc. at a glance. Reporting and Visibility Advanced reporting and business intelligence built into the Roomex platform allow you to analyse spend by any of your chosen criteria (projects, departments, geography etc.) without admin effort. This also lightens the burden of reporting to internal and external auditors. Duty of Care Roomex makes it easier to abide by your duty of care to employees we check all hotels to ensure they provide safe and appropriate accommodation. Interactive maps on the Roomex platform mean you can pinpoint their whereabouts immediately, and get in touch when necessary. Working Capital Value Booking through Roomex simplifies check-in and check-out for your employees. They do not need to pay for accommodation or even expenses (using the Roomex billback facility). This allows them to focus on doing business. First Class Priority Support Roomex employees are experienced hotel and business travel professionals. Priority support is available should any of your business travellers run into difficulties. All in all, the value really adds up if you make Roomex your standard platform for managing your hotel spend category and take advantage of its advanced capabilities. Even if all these values don’t apply in your case why not calculate for yourself what the savings would be and then get in touch and allow us to make that happen. View our full Value Calculator.

The issue of duty of care and business travel was given an airing at The Business Travel Conference 2017. One of the reasons why it is never a good idea for employees to self-serve for hotel accommodation, or for you to book a hotel on their behalf with a hotel you know nothing about, is their personal security. Here’s why…

This is the second in a series of posts taking a broad view of the value you can unlock when booking hotels. Part 2: Added value for the procurement function Hotels are a spend category that has gone unmanaged and uncontrolled for many years. This has been the case for a number of reasons, but the main one has simply been that with digitalisation, it seemed very difficult for procurement officers to squeeze any additional value out of hotels. What is the point of negotiating corporate deals when anyone can go online and get a better deal on hotel booking sites?

There’s an age-old discussion in the business travel industry about whether it’s best to book hotels via online sites or by going directly to the hotels themselves. The conversations are (far too) often focused on one aspect: price. Every CFO or Travel Booker knows it’s their duty to the company to get the best price on a room, but they might not understand that price alone isn’t the best indicator of whether a deal is good or not. Being able to get value for the time spent booking business travel as well as having control over the process are two aspects that are just as integral to a spending strategy. It’s after this understanding that the argument for going to online search aggregators or direct to the hotels gets a third challenger: dedicated business hotel booking platforms like Roomex.