CASE STUDY

How a leading technology firm transformed its global hotel programme

Key Highlights

This leading global technology firm, with operations spanning 18 countries and an annual travel expenditure of $60 million, had partnered successfully with FCM in the United States for several years. They decided to globalise their travel programme into Europe and Asia with three key goals:

Improve compliance across global operations
Gain control over global spending
Drive travel costs down

Challenge: travel policy and compliance

Despite the firm’s global footprint, its hotel programme was heavily US-centric, lacking in global data and local country engagement. Existing travel policies were not strong or consistent enough to require hotel bookings through the managed programme.

FCM tracked the firm’s data and analysed traveller behaviour, discovering that bookings were being made with only a 50% global hotel attachment rate. Without stronger policy controls, the firm struggled with negotiating rates in its key global markets.

Travel policy inconsistencies were not just limited to hotel compliance. Risk management was also an uphill battle without complete data, and it was challenging for the firm to deliver a positive traveller experience.

Solution: behavioural insights and local buy-in

FCM worked with the technology firm to build a comprehensive strategy, gathering behavioural data and insights from each country. All countries were then asked for input and feedback to further globalise the programme and ensure that each local market had a real stake in its success.

Once this buy-in was achieved, new language in the firm’s travel policy was able to mandate the booking of hotels through the global hotel programme with FCM whenever possible.

Results: greater savings achieved

The coordinated efforts and new policy mandate to book all hotels through FCM led to major improvements for the firm:

100 new hotels in key markets were added to the global hotel programme
Hotel attachment rate increased from 50% to 80% (remaining non-compliant bookings due to direct customer rates or internal meeting spend)
Overall hotel volume increased by $USD 8 million globally (from $13 million to $21 million)
Discount percentage increased by 3% (from 14% average discount to 17%)
The firm saved an additional $USD 1.6 million through the FCM global programme (from $1.8 million to $3.4 million)