How unified procurement can transform the guest experience

Delivering seamless and consistent customer experiences across multiple locations can be a daunting challenge. This is especially applicable to the travel and hospitality sector, with larger organizations managing thousands of properties across the country.

One way to maintain consistency across distributed locations is to focus on aligning internal procurement processes and policies, while still accommodating local purchasing needs and customer expectations.

By unifying internal buying policies, hospitality organizations can simplify operations, reduce expenses, and consistently deliver the high-quality experience guests expect.

Challenges with decentralized procurement

When procurement is poorly aligned across the hospitality portfolio, inconsistencies can creep into operations and, worse, the guest experience. Some of the most common pain points include:

• Inconsistent standards across different locations
  Hospitality brands rely on uniformity to maintain their reputation, as guests visiting multiple properties expect the same level of quality and experience.  Decentralized procurement can lead to differences in the quality of products and supplies.

• Higher operating costs
  Without cohesive policies, individual properties may purchase goods from disparate vendors at different price points. This can lead to more tail spend, higher expenses, and missed opportunities for bulk discounts.

• Operational disruption
  Supply chain fluctuations and seasonal demand impact hospitality significantly more than other industries. When properties aren’t aligned in their purchasing, reacting to such disruptions becomes considerably harder, leading to inventory shortages and staff struggling to provide a quality guest experience.

With the Amazon Business 2025 State of Procurement Data report finding that 94% of procurement leaders see opportunities to optimize their operations, now’s the time for travel and hospitality organizations to streamline their purchasing processes.

Unifying procurement across distributed locations

Bringing consistency to procurement starts with ensuring standardized purchasing processes across every location that can lead to improved efficiency and a better guest experience. To achieve this hospitality procurement leaders can:

• Maintain quality across the portfolio
  Standardize buying policies to align purchases with the organization’s quality preferences. This helps hospitality staff provide guests with consistent experiences, regardless of the property they visit.

• Streamline decision-making
  Centralize policies to streamline selection, purchasing, and approvals, reducing the administrative overload for both procurement administrators and on-site staff. This allows the latter to focus on their primary goal: serving guests.

• Reduce costs
  Coordinate procurement through a single solution, buy in bulk and save more.

Standardize procurement across hospitality properties

Transitioning to centralized procurement can be seamless with the right tools and solutions. For example, with the Guided Buying tool on Amazon Business, hospitality procurement administrators can steer their buyers towards preferred products or suppliers, helping to maintain a consistent quality across different locations.

Organizations can also create a catalog of organization-preferred products on Amazon Business, providing property managers with a pre-approved selection of items to purchase from. This minimizes the time buyers spend searching for products and reduces the approval workload for administrators, all while ensuring purchases align with the organization’s quality standards.

Approval workflows enable staff to buy what they need, when they need it quickly, while adhering to their organization’s procurement policies. Rather than managing purchase requests over email, approvers can seamlessly review and approve their buyers’ orders their Amazon Business account.

Guests know what they want

Customers and guests tend to return to brands knowing they’ll find a consistent level of comfort and quality – no matter the location.

By centralizing purchasing policies, travel and hospitality organizations can improve operational efficiency and, more importantly, deliver a consistent experience that drives brand loyalty among new and returning customers.