Roomex News Archives

Roomex Launches New 2016 Booking Engine at London Business Travel Show

Roomex, the online hotel booking platform for business travel, is launching a brand new hotel booking engine on Wednesday at the London Business Travel Show 2016. Roomex offers corporate rates at over 550,000 hotels worldwide and has saved its clients on average 21% against BAR in the last 12 months. The new booking platform will build on developments in 2015 and result in an even faster and easier booking process. There are 4 Key Pillars to the Roomex platform: Cost Savings Time Savings Live Reporting Policy and Control Roomex has enjoyed rapid growth throughout the UK and Ireland over the last 3 years and now boasts an incredible client list. The overriding principal behind the platform is to make the corporate hotel booking process easier for everyone in the business, from the booker to the traveller, to accounts, to the CFO, HR and Procurement. Roomex does this through an extremely straightforward booking flow and even the sign-up is simple – No Costs, No Contract, No Fees.

Roomex opens new locations throughout UK

Roomex now has offices and local staff throughout all of Ireland and The UK. Our two central offices are in Dublin and London, but we now also have Roomex staff on the ground locally. If at any stage you would like to see or talk about Roomex, and how it can save your business time and money, please don’t hesitate to ‘Request a Demo’ at the top of this page. Our initial demo takes about 15 minutes to do online over the phone, but we’re more than happy to come our and meet with you too. And, since we have no set up fees or contracts, there’s no pressure to buy, we’re happy for you to just try it !

New Roomex website goes live !

We launched our new website today at http://www.roomex.com ! Apart from taking in our new branding and design, we have also re-developed the Roomex hotel booking engine. The new website is firmly focused on our corporate clients and how Roomex delivers value to them. We also launched our new blog which we’d love you to subscribe to or get involved with sharing our blog posts across social media, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook ! If you have any feedback on the new site, we’d love to hear it !

Roomex 2015 – Thank You !

Another year over and we’re delighted to say that 2015 has been our best year ever. We have grown our presence in the Irish and UK markets, created some wonderful new alliances with hotels, added new clients, team members and technology to make our service the best it has ever been. Some of our key achievements in 2015 included Doubling our customer base and working with even more incredible companies both in Ireland and the UK, making their hotel booking process easier ! Saving our clients over 1.7 million / £1.3 million, measured ! Integration with Google Maps, making searching for hotels even easier Increase global supply to over 550,000 Hotels Worldwide Addition of the Premier Inn UK and Travelodge UK chains to the platform Addition of thousands of new hotel contracts through the GDS Introduction of Client Cost Codes into the booking flow Introduction of Profile Intelligence into the booking flow Introduction of Travel Policy & Duty of Care into the platform Recruitment of more fantastic people to work in Roomex, doubling our staff numbers Opening a new office in London as well as branches throughout the UK Attendance, membership, sponsorship and active participation with leading industry organsisations including Exporters Association, Institute of Travel and Meeting, Global Business Travel Association, Chambers of Commerce in Dublin, Cork, London, Birmingham, Glasgow and Manchester Awards – Deloitte Technology Fast 50, Kuehne & Nagle Innovative Supplier of the Year, SFA National Business Awards, Exporters Awards, Travel Technology Awards, tHackathon winners None of this would be possible without the ongoing support of our clients, so a big THANK YOU to all those amazing companies that have made Roomex their default hotel booking service in 2015. We are proud to say that we have retained all of our customers and we very much appreciate the loyalty of each and every one. We have big plans for the year ahead so please follow us on our blog here and look out for our announcements throughout the coming year.

Roomex Saves Over 1.7 million for Business Clients in 2015

One of the biggest benefits of using Roomex for Business is that we provide instant visibility on total hotel spend… and savings ! This allows senior management to analyse spend based on any cost centre they wish, typically by department or project. We access the best rates in corporate travel through our own direct contracting but also by incorporating the world’s biggest hotel systems into our company portals. We recognise that securing the best rate is a key reason for using Roomex and therefore have developed our own instant price-checking technology which compares the price of every reservation made through Roomex against the Best Available Rate at the hotel booked. This ensures that our clients are getting the best rates, that the savings data in our clients reports is accurate and it consistently emphasises the value of the Roomex service. 2015 has once again shown the incredible value that we bring to Roomex Clients – 1,766,630 worth of value on cost savings alone ! That is over 1.7m extra that our 400 business clients in Ireland and the UK would have spent on hotels had they not booked through Roomex. When added to the time savings, live reporting, booking control and Duty of Care, the true worth of the service becomes apparent. Throughout 2016 we will continue to add services which will improve the experience for our valued customers and keep pushing savings higher and higher.

Roomex – Awards for 2015

We’ve had an incredible run of awards and nominations in the last few months, here’s a summary: Deloitte Technology Fast 50, this is our 4th time receiving a ‘Deloitte’ having previously won the Rising Star Award in 2008. Kuehne & Nagel, Innovative Supplier of the Year Award SFA National Business Awards Finalist, Winner and Announcement with the President of Ireland in March 2016 Irish Exporters Association nomination for High Potential Exporters Award ITM Travel Awards Nomination – Best Travel Technology Provider Team Winners of Technology Hackathon #tHackDublin sponsored by tnooz and Skyscanner Thank you !

Corporate Hotel Bookings in under 1 minute!

Roomex, the leading corporate hotel booking service, today announced a major service upgrade which will lead to vastly improved booking speeds. One minute bookings are now very much the reality says Jack Donaghy, CEO at Roomex. For many months, our corporate clients have been able to save their most frequently visited locations, key hotels, contact information and even company cost codes as part of their booking process. The one element that required repeated inputting was credit card information for payment. Now that this can be saved for regular use the whole booking process can be comfortably achieved in less than 60 seconds he continued. The majority of our clients are on monthly billing, whereby we issue one itemised monthly bill for all hotel spend but some clients prefer to pay by credit card and this closes that loop concluded Donaghy. Product innovation has been key to Roomex becoming the most unique and fastest growing online corporate travel tool in the market. Roomex works with over 300 global companies to better manage their corporate hotel booking process. Clients include, Central Bank of Ireland, Musgrave Group, Dairygold, Sisk Group and Laya Healthcare. Cost savings have averaged 21% in the last 12 months, with total savings in 2014 topping 1.8m.

Roomex exhibit at Construction Industry Federation Annual Conference

Roomex recently exhibited at The Construction Industry Federation Annual Conference in the Aviva Stadium in October. As exhibitors we networked with key decision makers from all areas of the construction and engineering industries. Throughout the day a genuine feeling that a sustainable and robust recovery of Irish construction activity has begun pervaded the event. The theme for this year’s conference was Achieving Construction 2020’s Vision in line with the recently launched strategy for the sector in Ireland. A top class line-up of speakers presented to almost 300 delegates and the keynote speech was given by An Tanaiste, Joan Burton TD. Coming as it did only weeks before the Budget, this was a particularly timely intervention by Ms Burton as she had the chance to outline the Government’s plans for the sector in the year ahead. She emphasized the importance of Construction to any functioning economy but emphasized that we must not repeat our past overdependence on it, in 2008 construction made up 20% of Irish industrial activity but now has fallen to only 6%, it was widely agreed on the day that a figure somewhere between the two is sustainable.. Recognised by government, the CIF is the national and regional representative body for construction industry employers in Ireland. Several CIF members have engaged the services of Roomex to better manage their corporate hotel reservations including Sisk Group, Kirby Group, Actavo, Mercury and Dornan Engineering. These companies are saving time and money by using the Roomex for Business platform. Kirby Group Financial Accountant Niall McNally believes that using Roomex has brought immediate benefits to the company. Kirby Group began working with Roomex in early 2014 and I have to say that they have improved our hotel booking process by tenfold. Previously, our receptionists would have to search for hotels across Ireland/UK/Europe by themselves, often under time pressure and trying to find a nice, decent priced hotel was a constant challenge for them. Roomex have taken over this pressure and their excellent live reporting facilities as well as the ease with which we can allocate costs to individual projects, has saved us time and money. Their customer service is excellent, and they are always eager to meet whatever demands we may have. All in all, an excellent Irish company. At Sisk Group, their Financial Accountant highlights the efficiencies that Roomex brings to the hotel booking process. Sisk Group has been working Roomex for Business for over a year now and it has completely transformed our hotel booking process. Previously we received 60-70 invoices a month from hotels all over Europe, now we receive just one! Plus the one invoice we do receive includes line by detail of every hotel booking, by guest, already allocated to its appropriate cost centre as Roomex has built this into the booking process. We also have access to live reporting, save considerably on our spend and can ring Roomex if ever we need help looking for hotels. I have no hesitation in recommending Roomex, it not only saves us time and money but it gives us complete visibility and control.

Roomex Sponsors Manufacturing Event

An estimated 400 delegates attended this week’s National Manufacturing & Supply Chain Conference and Exhibition in the Aviva Stadium. The sold-out signs were posted on the event website in the lead-up to the conference and it was standing room only in a packed exhibition suite. The event was ably chaired by Sean Gallagher of Dragon’s Den fame who ensured a fast pace was maintained throughout. A number of fascinating presentations were made by companies such as Bristol-Myers Squib, Pfizer and Eli Lilly. For many the key benefit of the day was the opportunity to network with customers, prospects and even competitors and the 42 exhibitor stands were busy for the duration of the event. The key take-away messages from the conference are that Irish manufacturing is alive and indeed thriving. Irish factories are set for a 15 year output record with a surge in new orders driving manufacturing to its fastest rate of expansion since 1999. Industrial output is up by 32% on an annual basis. Government is planning to create 20,000 manufacturing jobs by 2016. Today, manufacturing in Ireland employs 210,000 people directly and over 400,000 people across all skill levels when indirect employment in taken into consideration. For Roomex the event was a great opportunity to showcase our service to key stakeholders in the Food, Beverage, Pharma, Chemical, Electronics, Medical Devices and Engineering industries. We are fortunate to have clients in all of these categories and there was sufficient interest at the event to indicate that plenty of new companies will soon by using Roomex for Business. The growth in manufacturing output will inevitably lead to increased corporate travel both in Ireland and internationally and our CEO, Jack Donaghy, had the opportunity to address the large attendance to outline exactly how Roomex is already helping many large Irish international companies to save time and money on their work-related hotel spend.

Hotel booking for business travel Why travel is essential to success

Recent rises and falls in business sentiment have been reflected in the amount of business related travel being carried out by company executives. As the recession bit, and costs were cut, approval for business related travel was slashed across all industries but recent reports suggest this reactionary policy was a mistake. The US Travel Association’s 2013 Travel Effect report detailed statistical modelling carried out over 18 years and 14 industries which indicates that for every dollar spent on business travel, US companies have experienced a $9.50 return in terms of revenue. Oxford Economics reports that companies that held firm and continued to travel during the recession are now reaping the rewards as they are better positioned to avail of an uptake in the clients fortunes. All indicators are that business travel is bouncing back after a difficult couple of years. Roomex has just completed its half year review and the numbers are very encouraging, some of the key findings: Corporate hotel bookings through Roomex for Business are up by over 50% over the same period last year International travel has increased by 23% Availability in key locations remains an issue as occupancy rates are often above 90% Business travellers are on the road more often with each of our top corporate clients having booked more room nights this year than in the same period last year. Roomex has successfully managed to control the cost of this increased travel even though room rates have increased throughout Ireland, UK and Europe. Business executives instinctively know the importance of their face-to-face meetings with almost two-thirds stating that increasing business travel expenditure would have a positive impact on company revenue and profitability. They also believe that 40% of existing customers would eventually be lost without in-person meetings. As companies do begin to travel more again it is often under the control of more restrictive travel policies. Roomex for Business is founded on saving time and money for its corporate clients. Critically, we have managed to return an average saving of 24% to our clients in the first half of 2014 and this comes at no cost to the customer. A clear message from our customer base is that they want more control over their travel management programme. Our strong contracting, unique technology and excellent support have all come together to see our customer list expand rapidly. Such is our confidence in our ability to deliver for our customers that we have a no contract policy in place. Our client retention rate of 100% this year underlines our ability to deliver on our promises. No Cost. No Contract. No Catch. If your company is making regular hotel bookings for business related travel why not talk to us about how we can assist you in this process.

Tag: Roomex News