Business Development Stage

 

• At qualifying stage, BD to find out when hotel names are required and likely budget

• BD to explain to clients the benefits of getting only suggested names at first and getting exact hotels 3-4 weeks before arrival. Abbey guarantees price, star rating and location (as wide as possible) 

 

Benefits for clients: 

• Months in advance all hotels are “full” on paper, hard to get best hotels

• Showing high occupancy months in advance, hotels will charge higher rates

• A lot of hotels receive AL back starting from January on and will get availability back and will be willing to negotiate more on rates, so we can guarantee the best prices

• Clients preferred hotels show as full months in advance but may become available closer to date

 

Benefits for Abbey: 

• Maximising Allocation Utilisation: our AL show full when we return it but after cancellations received the utilisation is lower

• Maximising internal space utilisation

• Possibility to swap groups/hotels internally to please clients

• Approx. 1/3 of our groups cancel every year, with LP we would not necessarily work on groups until there is a sales update on them

• Maximising margins

 

 

• Once client is happy that the exact hotel names will be confirmed 3-4 weeks before arrival, quote will follow these steps:

  • If client is already used to get hotel names 4 weeks before arrival, BD to use normal generics in the pcm. This is important: if we can still use our normal generics but confirm hotel names to clients 4 weeks before arrival, this will improve greatly our margins.

  • If client has only been convinced/educated now to get hotel names 4 weeks before arrival and see the lower price as the major benefit, BD to use Late Placement rates in the PCM

  • In some cases we will have to send both offers to clients in order to show the difference in price or give a reduction if they go for the late placement rates.

• New service line status LP

  • Late placement rates are defaulted to LP status

  • If normal generic rates are used, but clients is happy to get hotel names 4 weeks out, BD to change the generic rates lines to status LP once the group confirms

• NEW on 12.08.19; BD Ireland to insert RPCM  into FAS – this is because in Ireland Accom, different people look after different geographical areas so no one person has overview of budget.

• In some cases and programs, we can use a mix of late placement and non late placement. Example: program London / Cornwall / Bristol / London, here we would place Cornwall straight away but leave all other areas as LP

• BD to use as wide areas as possible, instead of guaranteeing 1 specific location only.

• Once group is confirmed based on LP, BD changes booking status to CO/CP and hands over directly to customer care.

BD inserts any relevant notes on budgets in supplier service notes within pcm. Notes can be “client prefers X location” or “XY area works best with itinerary” or “client has a bit more money available” or “nights can be split between 2 locations” etc. Also for example if LP rate used is for Mayo/Sligo, make sure the note reflects the exact regions.

This supplier service notes needs to be extractable in pivots.

Action c/o Jamie:

Check the list of supplier service notes and see if we can recycle/rename any of them

Check if supplier note can be pulled into pivots

• CC takes over the group and links the pcm with LP status

• Double coaches : late placement ok only if group can be placed in 2 different hotels  

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Accommodation Stage

• No FAS will be produced –Unless the program has a mix of late placement and not late placement locations, in this case FAS is also produced as normal

• Accomm pulls reports on LP service lines: report shows budget, areas, any notes BD has filled in, sales updates

• Accomm keeps monitoring LP lists and decide when best to place what

• If Accomm sees that there is a high number of late placement bookings in the same location on the same date and this can cause issues, Accomm to flag to BD to possibly avoid that date going forward

• Accomm is responsible for placing LP hotels, with aim to complete the bookings by 4 weeks before arrival

• Accomm liaise with CC and CC communicates the hotel names 4 weeks out

• Accomm should work on LP groups really only when the group is guaranteed, ie we have sales updates from client and we know the group has reached the min number required for the client to run that group.

• Some groups can have a mix of placed and LP locations. Example, an itinerary with Cornwall: we can book Cornwall straight away, but we can leave the rest of locations on LP

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Customer Care Stage

• CC takes over CP files that have been confirmed on LP, so there are no hotels booked

• CC changes status to CH as normal and handle the file as normal. It’s fundamental that CC takes over the CP files within 2 weeks and links PCM as soon as possible, so that LP lines can show on Accomm reports. Handovers to start on 01.09 every year.

• It’s CC responsibility to communicate hotel names to clients 4 weeks before arrival

• CC to liaise with Accomm on progress of LP hotels

• It’s CC responsibility to get updates from groups as early as possible and to get updates periodically. Sales updates to be reflected correctly in TP header details.

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