Case study: ITG taps Advito for hotel sourcing update

Imperial Tobacco Group shaves a projected US$211,000 from hotel spend.

Imperial Tobacco Group was seeking a more disciplined approach to hotels. In particular, travel program leaders wanted to modernize a manual hotel sourcing process that consumed six months of the year. A recent case study details what happened when ITG turned to business travel consultancy Advito for help.

“We had a lot of ideas, but we didn’t have the resources on our own to thoroughly assess our hotel strategy,” said Julie Iliffe, category buyer for the global travel program of Imperial Tobacco Group, which operates subsidiaries worldwide. “We needed best-practice guidance from experts who understood the hotel market and had rolled out strategies that worked at other companies. We needed expert knowledge about what was working in other sectors.”

Advito provided advice and hands-on expertise to:

  • Optimize ITG’s global hotel program and sourcing strategy
  • Make more hotel content available—going beyond the negotiated preferred program and global distribution system (GDS) options
  • Design and implement a global request for proposals process for hotels
  • Create a global catalog of hotel content that included properties preferred by local markets
  • Implement BCD Travel’s TripSource® platform, which simplified hotel booking and synced with BCD’s reporting and analytics platform DecisionSource®
  • Create an at-a-glance dashboard using DecisionSource data
  • Conduct audits to ensure ITG was getting the rates it had negotiated with hoteliers

The result: Imperial Tobacco Group moved to an automated, modern approach that enabled travelers to choose the most appropriate hotels for their trips. The company better aligned its hotel strategy to broader travel program goals. And, importantly, by streamlining and modernizing hotel sourcing, ITG achieved projected savings of approximately £161,000 (roughly US$211,000) in annual hotel spend, according to Advito analysis.

“Throughout the process, Advito was flexible. They tailored their consulting to fit what we really wanted to achieve,” Iliffe said. “Advito provided the experience we needed, and their attention to detail was excellent.”

Read the full story of Imperial Tobacco Group’s success after tapping Advito expertise and find more case studies at advito.com/insights/case-studies.

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