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Introduction

The walls between transient and meetings travel are coming down — and not by accident. In a post-pandemic, hybrid-first world, procurement leaders are under pressure to do more with less, while navigating rising costs, sustainability goals, and fragmented traveler behavior.

And yet, when it comes to hotel sourcing, many organizations are still treating transient and meetings travel as separate entities — managed by different teams, evaluated through different metrics, and contracted in silos.

This outdated model is no longer sustainable. Overlapping hotel spend, misaligned supplier relationships, and incomplete data are costing organizations millions. Worse, they’re undermining efforts to create traveler-centric, policy-compliant programs that also meet modern ESG and duty-of-care standards.

It’s time to solve the convergence puzzle — not by blending categories blindly, but by applying strategic intelligence and modern tools that allow procurement teams to unify their approach without losing the nuance of each segment.

The Problem with Parallel Procurement

Meetings and transient bookings often share the same properties, cities, and teams. But in most companies, they operate on separate tracks:

• Different sourcing cycles
• Separate rate negotiations
• No shared visibility on volume or supplier performance
• No unified reporting on traveler experience or sustainability

This creates a fundamental inefficiency: two programs, overlapping hotel spend, and missed opportunities for volume leverage. In large enterprises, the result can be millions in duplicative costs and zero transparency across categories.

The irony? Suppliers see the convergence. Many hotels work with the same client across both transient and meetings — and would welcome a more integrated, strategic relationship.

Unifying Spend Without Sacrificing Control

Convergence doesn’t mean collapsing transient and meetings sourcing into a single RFP. Instead, it means creating a shared strategic foundation that aligns policies, platforms, and supplier engagement.

At HRS, we help clients solve this with a three-layer approach:

‍ Shared Visibility Across Spend Categories

With HRS Connect, companies can view transient and meetings hotel spend in a unified dashboard — segmented by region, business unit, traveler profile, and sustainability metrics.

This single source of truth allows procurement to:
→ Identify overlapping properties and duplicate negotiations
→ Uncover volume-based negotiation opportunities
→Track compliance and traveler feedback across all segments

This isn’t just helpful — it’s transformative. When sourcing teams can finally see the big picture, smarter decisions follow naturally.

‍Smart Segmentation Meets Strategic Aggregation

Different trip types require different rates, amenities, and policies. A transient traveler staying one night for a client meeting doesn’t have the same needs as a project team hosting a 3-day strategy session.

But with HRS Copilot, companies can source with granularity and aggregation. By creating traveler personas and event types, Copilot allows procurement to:

→ Negotiate differentiated rates (e.g., dynamic vs. fixed) at the same property
→ Account for ESG performance in both transient and meetings bookings
→ Simulate the impact of shifting volume between categories on total spend and sustainability targets

It’s not about standardizing every trip. It’s about harmonizing sourcing logic across the board — with the flexibility to fine-tune where it matters.

‍One Interface, Multiple Paths

The traveler experience often reflects program structure. If meetings and transient bookings live in different platforms, with different support flows and hotel options, confusion (and leakage) follows.

With HRS Connect, all lodging bookings — transient, long-stay, project, meetings — can live within a single ecosystem. That means:

→ One policy framework with multiple pathways
→ Consistent visibility for travel managers and approvers
→ Integrated booking flows for both individual and group stays

This empowers travel managers to consolidate reporting, improve duty of care, and increase traveler satisfaction — even as the complexity behind the scenes is managed intelligently.

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Real-World Results: Convergence in Action

For a global engineering client managing thousands of consultants across transient and project work, convergence meant more than better pricing. It enabled:

• A 22% reduction in total lodging costs by aggregating volume
• Policy alignment across regions with different booking behaviors
• Real-time sustainability reporting across both meetings and business trips

By unifying sourcing logic and platforms — without eliminating local flexibility — the client gained strategic control over a previously fragmented landscape.

HRS Perspective: Empowering Procurement to Lead the Ecosystem

We believe that procurement teams are best positioned to drive convergence. They understand suppliers. They manage cost. And increasingly, they’re responsible for ESG outcomes, traveler experience, and cross-functional collaboration.

With tools like HRS Copilot and Connect, procurement leaders can:

• Map total hotel spend across all categories
• Identify sourcing synergies between transient and meetings
• Monitor supplier performance holistically
• Build a program that’s flexible on the surface — but optimized at the core

The future of corporate lodging isn’t about managing complexity. It’s about reducing it — through data, integration, and smarter orchestration.

From Puzzle to Strategy

The convergence of transient and meetings spend isn’t a challenge to overcome. It’s an opportunity to redefine hotel sourcing as a unified, intelligent, and strategic function.

With the right platforms, policies, and insights, companies can stop solving the same puzzle every year — and start designing a system that works as one.

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