Mitigate charges of 131,000 cancelled bedroom nights.
Negotiated cancellation terms
152 hotels
Refunded
£1.2 million
Objectives.
Having supported this telecommunications customer for 12 years, we were asked to book accommodation to run alongside an event for 3,500 attendees in June 2020. The event itself involved a two-week tenancy at the Birmingham NEC so the hotels needed to be as close to that location as possible.
Solution.
Our designated Project Team and Lead Consultant, who specialise in contract negotiation, searched for suitable accommodation six months prior to the event, which subsequently resulted in booking 131,000-bedroom nights across 152 different hotels in the Birmingham area.
Fast forward to March 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic caused the UK to ‘lockdown’, our customer’s CEO implemented a travel ban on all non-essential travel, including travel related to both meetings and events. Our team contacted all 152 hotels to re-negotiate the agreed 30-day cancellation contract with the hope of getting free cancellations where possible.
Results.
We successfully cancelled all the accommodation and worked hard to mitigate all charges throughout the process. We were able to return £1.2 million of our customer’s confirmed spend by re-negotiating the terms of the initial contract as well as the additional negotiation during the cancellation.
The customer was extremely pleased with the result and worked with us in delivering the event virtually instead.