Interview: Utell's Elaine Kennedy

Pegasus Solutions' hotel representation service Utell Hotels & Resorts this summer reported that total revenue for its hotels derived from travel management companies had jumped 30 percent year over year. At that time, it also reported the addition of more than 10,000 rooms to its portfolio. Utell vice president of global demand sales Elaine Kennedy spoke recently with BTN lodging editor Michael B. Baker about the drivers behind that growth and expectations for next year.

How are you growing corporate business for member hotels?

Several months ago, we started to ensure that we had a dedicated rates solicitation team. They are a dedicated resource ensuring we work with all the corporates, returning the right files and information they need. Through the technology side, we've been able to create a unique tool that helps us communicate between our vast portfolio of hotels and our sales team. We have been able to have [the hotels] provide us with all their corporate targets, so for all the corporations that want to work with us, we have any local, key information that sets our hotels apart and any selling points on why they want to get into that program. We then can take all of that information so we are fully equipped when we talk with any corporate buyer. We know across the portfolio who the key hotels are that want to get into that program, and we can have a very in-depth conversation with them about Utell. They're not just giving a general description of the hotel, saying, "As an independent, my hotel is in whatever destination and I have beautiful rooms." It's more strategic. We ask key questions like, "How far are you from the local office, and how long have you have had business with us?"

Do you expect corporate business travel to continue growing into next year?

Our rate solicitation team has been really busy. They're looking at slight growth, so I can see that travel is picking up. We've gone through several years where it's all about consolidation, and there's still an element of that, but now it's about working smartly and working strategically. [Corporate customers] still want to be careful about what decisions they are making and their budgets, and they're really looking for that added value in what their hotels can do for them. The growth area for us is in groups and events, so we have launched our new groups and events product. We have a portfolio of our hotels that have fantastic meeting facilities and very much want to work with the group business, and that ties into our corporate request-for-proposal process as well. That's where I see more consolidation: Combining different parts of their business into one RFP.

What's been driving the increase in revenues from TMCs?

We're trying to ensure that once we're working with everyone on a global level, we're also working on a regional level. We're seeing some growth and expansion within Latin America and within the Asia/Pacific region as well. We're seeing a lot of traction where corporates are really working together now closely with the TMCs in those regions and starting to drive business through the GDS—instead of having locals calling up hotels. Also, we have corporate account management. We always learn what trends are happening in the markets. We want our team to fit with the growth levels, so we have dedicated local teams in the Asia/Pacific region, Latin America, Europe and all the other regions. We want to work with the corporates on our hotel portfolio and educate the hotel on what's required from the corporate buyer's standpoint.

What have your targets been in portfolio expansion?

We have some serious momentum going on at the moment with a lot of new properties coming on board, new hotels in key corporate destinations. We have a very tight gap city analysis that we're working to, so all the hotels that we're adding are very strong corporate hotels. We're working hard in India and China. Those are two key focus areas for us. From a corporate buyer perspective, it's getting the right hotels at the right quality at the right location they need. We're trying to use a lot of our data, trends and information, and digest that and see where we need to go next in terms of the supply chain. We want to ensure that we're leveraging everything in the Pegasus family, so we can bring to the corporate buyers not just a representation platform, but also one that's strengthened by the Pegasus View for instance, where we have a lot of trend information.

What sort of data can come from the Pegasus side?

We are able to provide very specific data to show all the different rate codes the business is built upon. Sometimes at a chain level, they can't provide that in-depth information. If a hotel takes a reservation at a promotional rate, it's not linked to the profile, so we're able to link that and give a full view to the corporate buyer to see where their business is being booked and at what type of rate codes, so they can see at that point in time if there was a better rate available and we were able to take advantage of that. We like to provide very good data analysis to them to show them all of those different reports. Throughout the year and parts of the RFP season, we provide a lot of information to them in advance. They can review it and see which hotels that actually were booked, so they can consider reviewing those hotels to see whether they can get into the program.