Room for Savings: Optimizing Hotel Spend - Carlson

Seven steps to optimize hotel spend > Improve traveler compliance
Check that the online booking tool (OBT)
is well configured. Fifty-five percent of
surveyed travel managers report that their
organization has an OBT. Among them, more
than two-thirds are satisfied with OBT
features, but there is room for improvement
(Figure 111). For example, 23 percent of
travel managers say their OBT set-up could
be improved to encourage travelers to
choose preferred hotels (e.g., by flagging or
filtering out non-compliant properties).
Furthermore, 36 percent would like to make
the hotel section of their OBT more userfriendly
(e.g., by showing preferred hotels
and frequently visited sites on a map).
Figure 111: Most travel managers are satisfied with key OBT features, but there is room for
improvement
Travel managers’ satisfaction with their online booking tool
User-friendliness of
hotel section
8
28
56
8
Accuracy of rates
8
25
61
6
Comprehensiveness of
hotel information
4
21
64
11
Ability to steer travelers
toward preferred hotels
8
15
64
13
%
0 20 40 60 80 100
Very dissatisfied Dissatisfied Satisfied Very satisfied
Source: CWT Travel Management Institute
Based on a survey of travelers (57 responses)
117