Ms. Bhattacharyya

Eco-Friendly Practices

Maintaining Your Rates and Helping to Carbon Offset

By Rani Bhattacharyya, Sustainable Hospitality & Tourism Consultant, Bhattacharyya Consulting, Inc.

As more and more data becomes accessible online to the general public, its “management” for both marketing and performance reporting is also gaining signifigance for c- level decision makers in both the private and public sector. This article is going to highlight a few business traveler oriented data management platforms that hospitality professionals can also utilize to streamline RevPAR and ROI calculations. The unique data stored in these platforms concerning guest behavior and preferences can help your facilities operations run more efficiently based on accurate occupancy rates and allocation of resources, and indirectly reduce its impact on the environment.

GSA Bulletin FTR 10_06 and the E-Gov Travel Service

With Executive Order 13514 that was signed in 2009, federal agencies were directed to find ways to reduce the harmful impacts of their activities on the environment. To implement this effort, the US General Services Administration revised the Federal Travel Regulation Bulletin 10_06 by adding a list of recommendations for how government employees can achieve reductions while on business travel. The recommendations outlined in the bulletin by GSA include environmentally preferable purchasing guidelines for hotel, transportation, meeting planning, the suggestion that agency event planners also try to centralize facilities hosting federally sponsored events, utilize electronic checkout options when available, and use remote conferencing capabilities when feasible.

Along with this travel policy revision by the GSA, late last year the agency also initiated and RFP tendering process to select a vendor for hosting an upgraded version of their web-based travel portal, the E-Gov Travel Service. The upgrades which are interesting to note in this platform (that were outlined in the RFP) are enhanced capabilities for government employees to report on and track the environmental impacts resulting from transportation, lodging and event planning purchases. Vendors that have expressed an interest in the RFP include IT platform managers who are specialized in information management across a variety of social media, Web 2.0 applications, smart phones, and other personal data assistants. Since the initial start up of E-Gov Travel Service in 2002, the GSA has estimated that it has saved 38.3 million dollars a year in travel expenditures generated from civilian agency travel costs.

STAMMP

The STAMMP (Statewide Travel and Meeting Management Platform) was recently launched by the state of California to consolidate the state’s employee travel program with its Green meeting and management program. In this website, planning resources (both environmentally responsible and traditional) are available for state employee and public review. The site also contains a listing of hotels that are participating in California’s Green lodging and meeting programs. Vendor’s helping California’s Department of General Services administer this site include the Travel Store, Inc. and Concur, a new and creative data management provider that also specializes in information management across a variety of instant internet access applications, devices, and accounting platforms.

Private Sector Business Travel

Another set of clients that Concur has customized its data management services for include medium to large companies that need IT solutions to track employee expenditures while travelling. Back in 2008 however Sabre Holdings launched a similar service with customizable “environmentally conscious” functionality called geThere Green. In addition to the traditional price, mileage and other purchasing information included in these expenditure management platforms, geThere Green includes customizable carbon reporting attributes, corporate preferred supplier options, and pop up messaging functions that can address the specific reporting needs of corporate management plans.

Effective Use of these Platforms to Stabilize Your RevPAR

Calculating RevPAR requires a lot experience and insight concerning seasonal, monthly and in some cases weekly trends in social, political and economic conditions that are beyond the control of facility managers and brand executives. Many of these variables however are minimized by employers utilizing the data platforms described above. In working with platform administrators or managers to get a property listed, hospitality professionals can gain a wealth of information about guest purchasing behavior and potential guest preferences which can be used to finely tune your RevPAR and ROI estimates in the following ways:

• information about your property will reach thousands of public or corporate employees who have a limited amount of time and very specific criteria guiding their purchasing decisions
• Platform managers can assist you in customizing your marketing material and services to match their clients’ service needs and interests
• Working with the large employers utilizing these platforms can provide your finance team a better estimate of the specific occupancy needs of their clients over any given period of time, reducing variance resulting from more generalized market data.
• The integrated reporting by your guests who are reliant on these platforms can also help your own property or chain compare your property’s environmental performance with the real time purchasing behavior of guests.
• The guest behavioral data stored in these platforms can also be a source of brand and property development ideas as well, giving your facility or chain an edge over competitors.

Accurately calculating your facilities RevPAR, in the long run, also makes it more efficient by helping to minimize heat loss, and the waste of excess energy, water, housekeeping products and other consumables or perishables. These reductions, indirectly also reduce the amount of material entering your waste stream and your property’s consumption of natural resources. Having an accurate yet flexible RevPAR can also help you and your executive team benchmark your property’s environmental performance over an extended period of time and plan for additional refinements to your facility’s environmental and economic goals. Many information technology experts that I know jokingly believe that as newer technologies emerge, the human experience will eventually become a completely virtual one. An idea that’s quite feasible when you consider how much consumer behavior has been aggregated just within the last decade within the platforms I’ve briefly reviewed with you in this article. When I hear the IT guys talk like this however, I wonder how often they’ve taken into consideration the amount of time, labor and effort that hospitality professionals are required to give towards understanding, assessing and making a guest’s experience not only virtual but also tangible enough to be memorable?

Rani Bhattacharyya conducts research and analysis in the hospitality and tourism sectors that includes comparative studies of hospitality and tourism sustainability criteria, green business program criteria, and programs focused on local, regional, state and global sustainability efforts. Through her work Ms. Bhattacharyya is also studying how company and community performance benchmarking can be integrated into long-term city, and community development planning processes. Ms. Bhattacharyya can be contacted at 202-436-0800 or rani.a.bhattacharyya@gmail.com Extended Bio...

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