Sourcing Services within the Hotel Industry

From small guest houses to internationally branded chains, hotels spend a lot of money ensuring the expectations of their guests are met. However, the boom of last minute and discount websites in the last decade has meant that margins within the industry are even tighter effecting every department.

As a result of the spending power offered by the Hotel industry there are more and more specialist sourcing consultants appearing claiming to reduce your spending, whilst maintaining the quality of the products and services supplied. Unlike many other businesses, Hotels have a large and varied supply chain that covers many areas such as:

• Laundry Cleaning & Supply
• Food & Beverage
• Crockery & Cutlery
• Furniture
• Stationary
• Printed Products
• Maintenance

If you are considering using a procurement consultant, what should you be looking for and what questions should you be asking? Here are a few I found when recently researching some of the cases of other purchasers:-

Can your sourcing consultant guarantee a reduction in your running costs?

Sometimes a procurement consultant will be able to give you a forecast of expected return on investment (ROI) in order to give you a feel for the savings you will make. Like so many other things, the more buying power you have, the more money you are likely to save.
But even if you are a small chain or just an individual hotel, don’t let this discourage you. Smaller local companies and competitors of your current supplier may well fight for your business too – it is the job of the Sourcing Consultant to make that happen!

Will the sourcing consultant assist during any supplier transitions and what guarantees are there surrounding service disruptions as a result of any changes?

Let’s face it, if you have any long term supplier relationships in place then implementing a system like this could potentially make maintaining these relationships more difficult and could break down your supply chain temporarily. Making sure that your sourcing consultant has a plan in place in preparation for any disruption is crucial, especially during busy periods.

How soon will you start to see savings in your purchases?

Are the savings instantaneous or do you have an initial outlay to consider? Some companies offer their services free of charge if you don’t see a reduction in costs, but what if that takes months? Will you be paying the consultant in the meantime?

Of course, before you do anything it is important to make sure you don’t have any service agreements in place that can’t be broken. But in the long term, finding a sourcing consultant might save your business some crucial pounds. As a result, I am certain that the consultants trying to save money in the industry are going to be around for years to come and judging by the savings they could make, we should probably welcome that.