How Can We Raise Our Visibility Among Our Core Corporate Players, Especially To Fill Distressed Inve

26/07/2007

We are a small hotel chain but we cover many key UK cities. How can we raise our visibility among core corporate players, especially to fill distressed inventory?

Paul Raymond, Conferma

The general managers of most of your properties will be aware of the large local corporate customers and have established communication with them.

The second route into the corporate market is via intermediaries. This marketplace has become increasingly competitive as the major business travel agencies (Amex, Hogg Robinson, Carlson Wagonlit, etc) have targeted hotels following the reduction of traditional air commission revenues. While these agencies have recognised the business opportunity, they've found it difficult to offer the efficient services provided by the specialist hotel booking agencies (BSI, Expotel, NIS Europe, etc).

It's impossible to ignore the global distribution systems, as these are still the primary search and booking tool for corporate travel agents. However, the cost of distribution, and the length of time it takes for information to be added and manipulated, combined with the expectation of price parity with other distributions channels, can become onerous to manage.

Moving forward, the key to distribution to the corporate marketplace will undoubtedly be about the properties and chains delivering consistent data on a realtime, well-managed basis. The technology for data delivery has reached a stage where a hotel group which wants to be taken seriously must be looking at outwardfacing, standardised data delivery, which it can then offer to any distributor.

Conferma's ability to aggregate data from numerous sources, consolidating it into the corporate travel management processes, enables these organisations to improve productivity and increase the added value to their customers and suppliers.