Strategic venue sourcing team helps deliver huge savings

Challenge

Our client set out to find a venue sourcing partner that would provide global account sourcing at a strategic level. The client was searching for a provider with attention to detail, one that was right for the account and one that would be able to advise on the best locations for their national and international clinical and commercial meetings based on experience and expertise.

Solution

Ashfield assigned a dedicated venue sourcing team with individuals who had strong relationships in the industry. Key to the success of the account was team members who were tenured in industry, specialists in their field with established relationships with hotel chains and strong working knowledge of the hotel products they were sourcing. It was extremely important to our client that our team members had the ability to listen closely to stakeholder requirements, understand the reason for each meeting and source what was needed, but also proactively provide suggestions on ways to maximize value. These individuals not only represent the client in the sourcing process but took the needs of our clients to hotels and returned with the best options proactively, fully explaining why other venues will or will not work, and communicating this up to key stakeholders.

Result

Our client continues to recognize the value our strategic sourcing team brings to their organization and often uses our team as a training tool to help the other markets understand the inner workings of Cvent and how to use the tool to make everyone’s jobs easier. They consistently remark how well our team understands and over-delivers initial expectations. In the past year our team of three global strategic venue sourcers has helped our client realize a 25% average cost saving on room rate. The team has contracted 186 programs – 143 domestic and 43 international – and has sourced 93% of the contracts within our client’s preferred hotel program, grossing $5.2 million spend within the preferred properties.