Even without the leverage of the largest travel buyers, small and midmarket companies have opportunities for savings and sourcing strategies across the three major travel categories of air, lodging and car rental.
Industry consolidation and tighter financial controls have made airlines a tough segment for SME buyers, while car rental vendors remain eager to get them to the table. Hotels continue to enjoy what has been a lengthy seller's market, but that paradoxically might present an advantage to some SME buyers at the expense of larger buyers with programs busy hotels no longer may wish to accommodate fully.
At the very least, even the smallest buyer usually can find a key supplier among those categories open to discussions for small discounts or traveler perks. For midmarket programs with significant volume, many of the same strategies employed by large-market buyers can be effective, although execution requires a solid grasp of travel program data.
Airlines
Managed airline programs remain a challenge for SME buyers, with the negotiating table largely out of reach to those outside the higher end of the SME spending spectrum. Others have turned to specialized SME programs offered by airlines, although some buyers say driving value from those programs also is difficult.
Generally speaking, for North American markets it takes more than $500,000 in annual business for an airline to be willing to negotiate with a buyer, Advito vice president Bob Brindley said. Buyers with more than $10 million in annual U.S. air volume often are able to negotiate discounts across multiple carriers, he added.
"Most of our clients north of $2 million in air spend have an airline relationship, a preferred agreement with an airline," said Mark Walton, vice president of strategy and account management for Orbitz for Business. "They may not have the same deal points as someone spending $100 million, but if you can have the data points and the business acumen to negotiate and can represent an opportunity for yield or marketshare improvement, you're going to be able to get their attention."
Airlines will take into consideration more than overall volume. An airline is more likely to negotiate with a company offering a relatively higher proportion of volume in a very competitive market versus the same volume in a high-demand market or one in which a single airline dominates, Brindley said. Similarly, airlines will be more eager to negotiate with a company that offers a high amount of premium-class travel, even if the overall total is small, as opposed to a larger volume of economy-class-only fares, he said.
Dart Container Corp. travel manager Cheryl Benjamin said she's able to leverage a little additional clout with airlines thanks to her company's status as an ARC-certified Corporate Travel Department.
"It is still a hard category to negotiate, but contracting directly gives us a little more leeway not so much in the actual dollars but in the soft-dollar things, like a better working relationship with my account rep," said Benjamin, who also chairs the CTD Association. "My discounts have remained pretty stable over the years, which has been a bonus."
Other buyers have had a tougher time. Jerry Richerson, strategic sourcing director for Stewart Title Guaranty Co., said it took him two weeks just to find the right contact at one airline with which he needed to negotiate.
"The airlines that will talk to us have basically said that, since we don't have a TMC, the best they can do is give us a 2 percent discount contract," he said. "Most travelers are savvy enough that they can go online and find a 2 percent discount themselves."
Even so, Richerson said he takes those discounts when he can get them and posts them to the company's travel site, although their use is not mandated.
Pattie Harris, travel manager for midmarket clothing retailer Oxford Industries, faces similar difficulties, saying during a March conference in Atlanta convened by The BTN Group that finding discounts with airlines related to her company's spending level is "virtually impossible." Ancillary fees are compounding Oxford's airline spending levels—which she hopes eventually will offer her more leverage in negotiations—but for now, her travelers depend more on the best fare of the day rather than negotiated contracts, she said.
Success also varies by market. Corinthian Colleges director of procurement and sourcing Sean Parham said that although his organization's spending generally is not enough to garner much attention from airlines, he was able to negotiate a "nice contract" with Delta. Being based in Southern California proved a bonus as Delta looks to grow its share at Los Angeles International Airport, he said.
"You have to rely on the relationships that you have fostered over the years with account managers and executives and hope that your market is a market they're focusing on," he said.
As a whole, SME negotiations with airlines are getting tougher, not easier, said Kevin Maguire, director of travel for intercollegiate athletics at the University of Texas. The American Airlines-US Airways merger, changing frequent-flyer status requirements and new fees and fares all are making negotiations a "crapshoot," he said.
"Things are changing so much," Maguire said. "Every day, they come up with some new wrinkles, and they have a tendency not to honor the old wrinkles."
Airlines outside of North America pose even tougher negotiations, according to Advito's Brindley. Whereas in the United States discounts are set for specific geographic destinations or hub markets versus non-hub markets, airlines in Asia and Europe often set discounts based on volume between individual origins and destinations, setting the barrier to entry even higher.
"You could have $50 million in airline spending on a global basis, but if you have less than X euro between Frankfurt and Paris, you'll have a very hard time in getting airlines interested in making an offer," Brindley said.
When negotiations are not an option, small and midmarket buyers also have as a resource airline-provided small business programs. Legacy carriers offer points-based programs—American Airlines Business Extra, Delta SkyBonus and United PerksPlus, for example—in which company travel earns points toward travel rewards and other such perks as upgrades or lounge access.
Stewart Title's Richerson said he has signed up for all such programs when applicable, although managing the programs in a nonmandated environment has dulled their benefits. They also create some level of confusion among travelers who are not aware that they can still earn points toward their own personal rewards programs while using them, he said.
Oxford's Harris said redeeming points from those programs also is becoming more difficult.
"As consolidation continues, there are fewer seats available," she said. "So, you sit there with lots of points but nothing you can do with them."
Even so, such programs are "better than no program at all" and can provide some soft-dollar benefits, Brindley said.
Corinthian Colleges' Parham said he's had the most success with American's Business Extra, because of its flexibility and rate of rewarding points. To maximize their value, he set a threshold of $800 as the lowest-cost fare for which the institution would opt to use points.
"If you look at the value of the points versus the value of the flights, it may not work out sometimes," he said. "If it's over $800, then I feel we are actually getting our value back for the money we spent to earn those points."
Airlines also have had mixed levels of success with booking portals for small and midsize business. Southwest Airlines' Swabiz product endures, but some legacy airlines shuttered similar portals over the years. More recently, JetBlue Airways last year announced a partnership with booking supplier nuTravel to upgrade its small-business air-booking portal, which remains a work in progress.
Hotels
Negotiated hotel deals in top-volume destinations are within the grasp of most small and midmarket travel buyers, and evolving technology and shifting hotel priorities are enabling some buyers to develop more sophisticated programs.
Alison Galik, senior vice president of operations at hospitality spend management company Lanyon said the firm in 2013 saw a 23 percent growth in SME clients—which it identifies as a program with 150 or fewer hotels—compared with 2012. Such clients "typically start out as a more regional or local type of program and then start to spread," she said. "They might have the global business, but they're not ready to go out and manage it yet."
They also tend to come from a "manual program," in which they contact hotels directly using the phone, email and spreadsheets, she said.
That's where Stewart Title's Richerson is now. He has individual hotel agreements primarily near his headquarters office and around affiliate offices, he said. He plans to take a closer look at his spending to see where else he has sufficient room nights to leverage deals, perhaps with the help of a request-for-proposals service supplier, he said.
Dart's Benjamin also has fostered relationships with hotels near her company's production facilities, largely with midscale properties. Through those relationships, she for the most part has avoided significant rate increases even in the current seller's market, she said.
"We've heard about enormous increases, but we're not finding that as much with the hotels with which we have established good relationships," Benjamin said. "It's give and take; you want to be sure that you're not asking for so much of a discount that they're not making any money off of it."
For smaller companies, such negotiations might be an informal process as opposed to an annual RFP process, CWT Solutions Group senior director of North America Joel Wartgow said.
"Some people get a little frustrated with the annual hotel RFP processes, so for some smaller companies, do you need to do that every year, or can you manage your program a little more strategically?" he said. "Maybe it's less structured and you just reconfirm with them every year."
Advito's Brindley said such agreements make a good foundation for SME hotel program management. Chainwide deals can supplement programs in markets without significant volume, as can spot-buying to take advantage of off-season and off-peak rates, he said.
Like airline contracts, chainwide hotel agreements traditionally have been tougher for SME clients to get, compared to deals for larger buyers. Richerson said The Blackstone Group—owners of hotel chains including Hilton Hotels Corp. and La Quinta Inns and Suites—is the primary owner with which he does business, "but they won't talk to us about the national footprint," he said. Even so, hotel companies now are opening more chainwide deals to smaller clients than they have before, Brindley said.
For one, SME buyers can actually be a more attractive proposition for hotels than large buyers in a strong seller's market, he said.
"Every once in a while, you get in a situation where a client is too large, and a hotel can't afford to give up that much of their inventory at a low rate," Brindley said. "Sometimes big can be too big, which is why big meetings pay a premium over the transient rate."
At the same time, hotels during the past several years increasingly have pushed dynamic pricing programs in lieu of fixed-rate programs. Corinthian Colleges' Parham, who manages a program of about 150 hotels, said Hilton in particular has been looking to spread that model across his program.
"They are saying it would be easier for us and we'd see a higher adoption and compliance in our program," he said. "Because it's a percentage off best-available rate, I can't really say where I'm going to fall in my budget, so I don't see it yet."
Sophisticated SME hotel programs also should have some degree of monitoring for rate integrity, Brindley said. As companies like Lanyon target SME buyers, automating those tasks is becoming more commonplace among the set, Galik said.
"Not only is the technology available, but there has been a shift toward financial control," Lanyon EMEA managing director Roland Tanner added. "Companies that may have seen travel as a miscellaneous expense can see how much of an expenditure it is and are able to manage and track it with tools."
Car Rental
While some airlines and hotels might give small and midmarket buyers the cold shoulder, suppliers in the car rental space appear much more eager to court them.
Even in an industry that during the past several years in the United States has consolidated to three major suppliers, car rental companies have struggled to make much progress in pushing commercial rates higher. During Avis Budget's conference call to discuss fourth-quarter 2013 financial performance, president and CEO Ronald Nelson said he saw as a remedy small and midmarket clients, who on average pay a higher rate than the largest corporate customers.
"The opportunity for us that will have the most immediate impact is changing the mix of our commercial business and being more aggressive on midmarket and more aggressive on small business," Nelson said. "[That] will effectively average down the large commercial contract base that's winding through."
Focusing only on rates can be counterproductive in a car rental program, Advito's Brindley said. While SME buyers might be able to save on car rental rates via spot-buying, they could end up paying for it in other ways. Just looking for the lowest rate usually would end in a subcompact car at an off-airport location, he said.
"You want to avoid potential increased level of time and hassle to an employee," he said. "For what you're paying by spot-buying compact cars, at a similar rate you could be getting bigger cars with an increased level of service."
Dart's Benjamin said the car rental space, more than any other, requires an evaluation of service above all else. In North America at least, most vendors have the same general airport locations and, particularly as consortia including CoreTrust get into the discount arena, don't vary that widely on price.
Those services also are what will drive compliance, she said. "If you as a travel manager can sign an agreement where they get that complimentary gold service, and all travelers can get that counter bypass, you're a hero," Benjamin said.
Stewart Title's Richerson said he was able to negotiate a deal with Avis Budget that was "really good for the amount of spend we have out there." He also was able to negotiate insurance coverage into the rate, and Avis also matches loyalty levels for travelers who have status with other car rental vendors, he said.
His goal is to broaden compliance among his travelers, in part through a new communication strategy.
"We've had some success, but Avis would like to see more, as would I," Richerson said. "Right now, they have probably 65 percent of our spend; I would like to see [the company have] all of it."
This report originally appeared in the April 14, 2014 edition of Business Travel News.