Overview

The client is one of Australia’s largest rail freight operators, moving coal, iron ore, agricultural freight and more across the nation.

Objective

The client had a complex accommodation program due to needing accommodation options at remote and regional locations, where availability was limited and therefore had allotment requirements to ensure availability.  They were experiencing significant cost wastage as their incumbent travel management company (TMC) didn’t provide visibility over unused room inventory and did not have an automated way of managing the allotments.

CTM was engaged to help reduce this wasted expenditure, and provide an easier, more transparent and automated solution for their allotment requirements.

Challenges

Previously, all allotments were booked offline, directly with the hotel supplier. Bookers had no oversight of the allotment inventory and weren’t aware if their bookings were being tracked against the allotment or if they were being charged regular room rates.

There was also a lack of cost consolidation, as internal travel bookers were contracting hotels directly and negotiating their own rates without oversight of the client.

With no visibility over negotiated rates, allotment fulfilment or hotel incidental costs, the client’s hotel program was costing them significantly more than it should.

Solution

CTM worked with the client to create a consolidated hotel program, leveraging CTM’s global buying power as well as the client’s purchasing power across combined bookings nationally, rather than individually negotiated hotels.

CTM directly integrated the negotiated allotments into CTM’s proprietary online booking tool, Lightning, with clear tags added to properties with allotment agreements in place. This allows the client to manage all allotments in a fully transparent, online environment, with live inventory and full reporting capability.

A new invoicing process was introduced allowing the client’s finance team to separate incidentals from chargebacks.

Regular reporting was made available through CTM Data Hub, adhering to the client’s compliance measures and providing complete visibility over any unused or over-used inventory to support contract negotiations in future.

Result

• Unused inventory dropped significantly, saving the client a great deal in expenditure that was previously wasted on non-allotment rates.
• Traveller compliance increased once more visibility over incidentals and rate caps were made available to bookers.
• More competitive rates were negotiated thanks to right-sizing allotment agreements with hotel chains.