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SMEs waste time and money through lack of hotel policy
Small and medium sized UK businesses are paying scant attention to budgets when booking hotels for their staff and many don’t bother to negotiate preferential rates.
These are the findings of a survey commissioned by business accommodation provider BSI which discovered surprisingly outdated procurement practices amongst the country’s smaller companies.
It also discovered that many companies feel that duty of care towards their employees while travelling is not high on their priority list, despite tough new corporate manslaughter laws recently placed on the statute book which require companies to look after staff on business trips. One in six have no way of finding an employee on business during an emergency
The survey found that one in three companies do not actively negotiate terms and rates, one in two do not set a specific budget and stick to it, one in three say a robust purchasing process is not important and one in ten say employee duty of care is irrelevant to them.
More than half of the companies surveyed also had “no idea†how much they spent each year on hotels.
The survey showed staff found the booking process tedious and time consuming. More than a third described the booking process as frustrating and admitted they decided on business venues by which hotels they had booked first. One in five said they thought making and managing a booking could take between 30 minutes and two hours, with a third saying they make ten bookings a month.
Managing director of BSI Trevor Elswood said: “With margins tightening, SMEs are facing even greater budgetary and resource pressures. Our research shows that, due to limited understanding, apathy or misconceptions, a large number of SMEs are not following best practice procurement when buying and booking overnight accommodation, meetings and events, a fact that is likely to be causing them to waste significant time and money.
By Dinah Hatch
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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