Accelerating Your Success

Forty-four new hotels in major cities are in the process of signing up for the Green Hotels Global tool as a result of Amgen’s note about their green meetings program. With the support of the American Express/Maxvantage and StarCite teams the program is sure to be a success.

Properties have already signed in 19 cities in 3 countries, including: New York, Boston, Baltimore, DC, Chicago, Toronto, Ottawa, Miami, Denver, Dallas, Pheonix, San Francisco, Seattle and Los Angeles. Amgen requires the single set of independent and standardized metrics that Green Hotels Global provides to manage its environmental program.  The myriad of different metrics and approaches from programs developed by chains for their own properties are impossible to reconcile for a company that uses properties from many chains for its meeting and travel programs.

Accurate Data, Easy to Participate, Free for Corporations.

Green Hotels Global is rapidly becoming the industry standard for environmental performance.

We’d love to have your support during the current hotel season and with your meetings program. It’s very easy for you to participate! Please let me know if you have any questions or would like to set up a quick meeting.

Stay up to date by following this blog: http://greenhotelsglobal.wordpress.com.

For more information or to watch our webinar with StarCite go http://www.greenhotelsglobal.com

Thanks!

If you are serious about greener meetings and hotels, your company should seriously consider Green Hotels Global at www.greenhotelsglobal.com.

In your RFPs, require that your hotels sign up for a program like this.  A program that allows you to compare carbon emissions, energy consumption and water management for your hotels, side-by-side and apples-to-apples.  Green Hotels Global calculates standard metrics using energy, waste and water bills.  Instead on relying on marketing materials, this program allows you to make educated decisions based on actual energy consumption data.

Attend this Webinar sponsored by Starcite:

http://www2.starcite.com/starcite/newsandevents/events/upcoming-webinar-what-green-hotel

Please contact me at frankschnur@imagineic.com if you have any questions.

Thanks!!! 

Inform senior management – Before budgets for 2011 are finalized, inform senior management and business unit leaders involved in the budgeting and planning process of expected pricing changes.  Use the full 68-page version of the Forecast to create a custom prediction for your own organization.  The Forecast has detailed predictions covering 89 types of air tickets (short haul, long haul, trans-border for both economy and business class fares) for 21 countries and hotel price predictions for more than 500 cities globally.  With prices rising, senior management should consider re-allocation of budgets to more business critical functions, savings initiatives and travel alternatives. 

Support your negotiation strategy – Leverage the expertise of our Consultants that is captured in the Forecast – they negotiate contracts every day of the year, have years of experience and leverage proprietary Business Travel Monitor data based on billions of dollars of spend trending information.

Identify savings initiatives - See the section of the Forecast called Managed Travel Program Recommendations for savings ideas.  Use the predictions in the Forecast to help build the business case to invest in savings and cost avoidance initiatives.  Earlier this year we published best practice roadmap papers on both airline ancillary fees and alternatives to travel, among others. These papers, which are published every month, lay out the steps that you can take to drive savings initiatives within your company.

The Budgeting and Planning process may be the best opportunity to get your senior management to look at travel as a strategic investment rather than a frivolous expenditure!  Is your company making investment decisions based on good information or have travel budgets just "evolved" over time and been left to the discretion of individual business units? 

Don't think you can change this wasteful approach?  I think you can!!!

The Budgeting Season is NOW - get involved and add value!

 Accelerate your success by getting involved in the budgeting and planning process with senior management!

 Here are the questions that you can help senior management answer: 

1) How much are functional groups like, Human Resources, Finance and Marketing spending on travel?  Does this amount make sense? 

2) Are we spending too much on internal travel?

3) Are we spending enough on sales and client management? 

How you allocate and invest your travel budget will have a direct impact on your business results - both the top line and the bottom line.  Invest carefully and invest wisely!

Here are some more questions that you can help senior management answer: 

- How much of our travel could be replaced by virtual meetings?

- What percentage of our sales team’s travel spend is for client visits versus training and internal staff meetings?

- What are all of the reasons for internal meetings?

- Are there savings initiatives that we could take on that would allow us to travel less expensively?

- Are we investing in the right kinds of travel to grow our business?

- Do we spend more or less than our peers? Spend per employee? Spend per dollar of revenue?

- Can we use travel as a competitive weapon, to differentiate ourselves as others have done?

Need help?  Send me a note!  frank.e.schnur@aexp.com

Corporate travel program managers want to include greener hotels in their travel programs. They also want their travelers to be able to compare hotels' environmental impact at the point-of-sale. The challenge is that today there is no industry standard - no way to compare hotels in an apples-to-apples way. But there are new solutions emerging that are starting to address these needs. These solutions create a standard and disclose the results so that a fair quantitative comparison can be made. By looking at both absolute impact as well as year-over-year progress, they promise to provide some very valuable information. Once these types of solutions capture a critical mass of hotels, travelers and travel managers will have the information they need to make educated decisions.

Accelerate your success by starting your hotel program earlier this year.  If you have enough room nights in a city to negotiate a rate with a preferred property, its not to early to start your process now.  For major cities you typically need to be able to deliver at least 100 room nights per year to get a specially discounted rate for your company.  For smaller cities 50 room nights per year will probably be enough.

Hotliers are looking to fill their hotels in 2011 and that represents an opportunity for corporate buyers to partner with hotels to put your travelers in their hotels at a specially discounted rate.  With uncertainty about the economic recovery still lingering, there are great deals available in the marketplace.

Please send me a note at frank.e.schnur@aexp.com if you'd like some free help assessing your hotel program.

This is the first in the series.

If you want to be a greener traveler, in addition to bringing your reusable water bottle or coffee mug on your business trip, unplug your office before you leave on your business trip!

This article in the Huffington Post claims that as much as 10% of your month energy bill can come from items that are plugged in even when not in use!  They recommend using a power strip to make it more convenient to "unplug" multiple items at the same time.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/21/save-energy-by-unplugging_n_136625.html

I have plugged all of my office appliances into a couple of powerstrips.  The night before I leave on a business trip, I turn off the powerstrips and pack my reusable water bottle.

Imagine the impact on an entire office building...

Good luck building your army of green travelers! 

A significant number of Hotels continue to struggle with accurately loading corporate rates. Companies have found problems with up to 30% of their hotels. 

What other strategies are you taking to ensure rates are accurately loaded?

Get involved in budget&planning w/SrMgmt!

Help answer:

Internal vs external travel?

Use of virtual meetings?

Sales’ travel for clients vs internal?

Reasons for internal meetings?

How 2 travel less expensively?

Investing in right kinds of travel 2 grow?

Spend vs peers?

Travel as competitive weapon?

http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_16045/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=7PPXDBVK

This week-end I watched my son's middle school present Charles Dicken's play, A Christmas Carole.

The message could not be more clear: For a richer and more rewarding life, give back to your community and those in need.

Taking a few hours to help others will make you feel great. Volunteering gives you an opportunity to change people’s lives and your own. It offers many benefits including learning a new skill, being a part of a community, meeting new people and getting life experience. Check for volunteer opportunities in your local area or search the Internet to find a cause close to your heart. You can make a difference! 

Just listened to a great audio book called "Screamfree Parenting" by Hal Edward Runkel. I think the principles can be applied to all relationships.

My favorite take-aways are:

1) We need to invest in developing ourselves to become calmer and more unflappable leaders that empower our kids (employees, partners, etc) to become thoughtful and accountable individuals that make responsible decisions on their own.

2) The very freeing concept that we are NOT responsible FOR our kids decisions and actions (we cannot control what they do, we don't want to control what they do, we don't want to create robots); We are responsible TO our kids to be calm, mature and help them become progressively more independent decision-makers.

Accelerate your success by getting involved in the budgeting and planning process with senior management!

Here are the questions that you can help them answer:

1) How much does our company spend on internal versus external travel?

2) How much of our travel could be replaced by virtual meetings?

3) What percentage of our sales team’s travel spend is for client visits versus training and internal staff meetings?

4) What are all of the reasons for internal meetings?

5) Are there savings initiatives that we could take on that would allow us to travel less expensively?

6) Are we investing in the right kinds of travel to grow our business?

7) Do we spend more or less than our peers? Spend per employee? Spend per dollar of revenue?

8) Can we use travel as a competitive weapon, to differentiate ourselves as others have done?