Procurement for hospitality franchises and distributed locations

There are over 55,900 lodging properties in the United States, according to the American Hotel and Lodging Association. Some of the largest hotel chains own, run, or manage thousands of properties.

With these properties spreading across the country, supplying each of these distributed locations can be a complex logistical and administrative challenge, for both the hospitality organization’s procurement team and the staff at each of their properties.

With innovative tools, such as those offered by Amazon Business, procurement teams in travel and hospitality organizations can overcome the following challenges and make purchasing easier across their distributed locations.

Procurement challenges for distributed locations in travel and hospitality

1. Diverse needs

From motels and hostels to boutique hotels and luxury resorts, a hospitality organization’s portfolio is likely to have a range of lodging types to cater to different guests and travelers. Each location, or franchise, would have their own requirements for the type and quality of supplies needed to run each property. Other considerations such as guest demographics or the property’s wider community could also lead to different procurement requirements for every location. This requires a tailored approach to procurement that meets each location’s specific needs effectively.

2. Communication hurdles

Coordinating procurement across different time zones in the U.S. can cause delays or miscommunications. Even if a delivery is late by just a day or two, this can sometimes be the difference between a good and excellent customer experience. Having tools that can provide effective communication between a hospitality organization’s procurement team and their staff at distributed locations will help reduce the likelihood of delayed deliveries.

3. Delivery complexities

For hospitality chains, ensuring timely delivery of supplies and products to multiple different locations across the country requires efficient supply chain management. This challenge extends to managing delivery preferences for different properties as well, such as designating preferred days, times, and locations (e.g., front door, loading dock) to receive shipments.

4. Cost management

Whether multiple franchises or directly managed properties, hotel chains need to manage their procurement costs across distributed locations effectively. This can be achieved by centralizing procurement processes and having more visibility into spend at locations.

How to facilitate hospitality procurement across distributed locations

Innovative tools can make purchasing a breeze for both distributed staff and the procurement team, eliminating the current cumbersome process in travel and hospitality.

Empower staff at distributed locations

While hospitality procurement teams centralize procurement processes, they need to empower staff to purchase what they need for their properties, when they need it.

This can be achieved with guardrails. Guided Buying, a tool available with a Business Prime membership, allows procurement administrators to highlight to buyers the products and suppliers preferred by their hospitality organization.

Guided Buying also allows distributed locations to better support their local communities by buying local, possibly from small and diverse businesses around their area. Travel and hospitality organizations can also highlight products with the Climate Pledge Friendly label from 50+ third-party certifications.

Track spend of different properties or franchises

Even as employees are now empowered to buy, corporate headquarters and their procurement teams can still monitor spend at different locations with pre-built Spend Visibility reports and dashboards, which is available with a Business Prime membership.

This data can also provide hospitality organizations with the insights they need to optimize their procurement costs, even across their many locations.

Provide a consistent buying experience

Travel and hospitality organizations need to provide their distributed employees with a simple and familiar buying experience, so they can get their supplies easily and in a timely manner.

With over 300 different third-party systems like e-procurement, expense management and intelligent document processing (iDP) systems integrating with Amazon Business, hospitality organizations can easily connect their existing systems and provide a seamless buying experience for their distributed employees.

What’s more, procurement teams can enable deliveries to different locations and addresses under a single Amazon Business account, further simplifying the procurement process for hospitality organizations with hundreds or thousands of locations.

Focusing on your guest experience

In travel and hospitality, it’s often the smallest details that make the biggest impression on your customers. With Amazon Business, hospitality staff can spend less time sourcing, make smarter buying decisions, and focus on who matters most: their guests.

Originally published in Hospitality Net