A SmartBuyer travel specialist worked alongside the organisation’s Corporate Services and Procurement teams to bring the travel programme under strategic coverage, consolidating suppliers and renegotiating terms to take £18 million out of annual spend.
Annual travel savings
CLIENT
Large
enterprise
CATEGORY
Corporate
travel
SPECIALIST
Travel category
& sourcing
OUTCOME
£18m
a year
Corporate travel overspends quietly because it is bought in pieces. Airlines price on routes and volume commitments, hotel groups on city and season, rail on fare structures, so each is contracted on its own logic, often programme by programme. No supplier sees the organisation’s total volume, so none prices to it, and rates drift further through out-of-policy bookings and unused negotiated fares.
The obvious fix, asking each supplier for a better rate, fails because volume is the buyer’s main bargaining strength and it sits scattered across contracts. Consolidating means deciding which suppliers carry the volume and what travellers must book, which crosses policy and contracts together. Knowing what airlines and hotel groups will concede for volume, and what they will not, decides how far consolidation can go.
A substantial corporate services travel programme at a large enterprise, covering air, hotel and rail, with spend divided across a broad supplier base and agreed programme by programme.
Client identity not disclosed.
Working with Corporate Services and Procurement, the specialist treated air, hotel and rail as one book of spend, to be priced together and not programme by programme.
ANALYSE
Build one view of air, hotel and rail
Combined spend by supplier, route and city from the sources that record it, so leakage and out-of-policy booking showed up and every later position, on rates or on policy, rested on one set of figures.
BENCHMARK
Test rates and policy against the market
Compared achieved rates, and the travel policy that drives them, with comparable programmes, to find where fewer suppliers and tighter terms would cut cost without cutting the service travellers needed.
NEGOTIATE
Trade volume for rate and terms
Offered consolidated volume to a smaller supplier set in return for lower rates and firmer terms, and wrote policy to steer bookings towards them, so the saving was built into the rates.
£18m
£18 million out of annual travel spend, built into rates and policy so it repeats every year rather than landing as a one-off cut.
The saving is evidenced by supplier and route, so Finance holds an annual figure it can defend, report and plan against.
Fewer suppliers hold more of the volume, so air, hotel and rail spend stays visible and manageable at each contract review instead of drifting back across separate agreements.
Pricing the programme as one buyer
Suppliers compete harder for a larger share of a known total than for a slice of one they cannot see. The specialist presented the combined air, hotel and rail volume as one position and asked a smaller set of suppliers to compete for it, so one set of terms could apply across every programme and the volume carried real weight at the table.
Aligning policy with supplier terms
A negotiated rate only saves money when travellers book it, and booking behaviour follows policy. The specialist set policy and supplier terms together, so preferred suppliers received the volume the terms assumed and discounts were not lost to out-of-policy booking. Agree the booking rules alongside the negotiated rates, or the discount leaks away, booking by booking.
Complete
Complete
Complete
Specialist support without a permanent hire
SmartBuyer matches organisations with experienced specialists across 250+ categories, giving budget owners access to focused travel category and sourcing expertise exactly when the work demands it.
500+
specialists
Experienced category specialists who have consolidated corporate travel and other multi-supplier spend inside large organisations.
250+
categories
Focused coverage across travel and the wider indirect spend base, matched to the programme in hand.
Flexible
engagement
Specialist cover for a single programme or a wider category, scoped and costed before any work begins, with no permanent hire.