Savings are back at the top of the agenda. But there’s a limit to what another round of negotiations can achieve. The bigger opportunity is making sure travelers actually use what you negotiated.  

That’s why I see adoption as one of the biggest savings levers in corporate lodging and meetings today.

Lodging and meetings account for around 40% of business travel spend. Yet they’re also highly fragmented. Transient stays may sit in one system. Long stays somewhere else. Meetings and groups often follow completely different processes.

The result? A large share of spend never reaches the managed program. Across the data we see, leakage across lodging and meetings can reach around 58%. And that matters: average daily rates in managed channels can be around 17% lower. CO₂ emissions can be around 28% lower, too.

So the opportunity is clear. Increase adoption. Gain more control. Realize more savings. The question is how.

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FIVE WAYS TO DRIVE ADOPTION AND SAVINGS:
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1. Give travelers a reason to stay in your program.
   Start with the basics: the right content at the right price. If travelers can’t find the hotel, long-stay option, or meeting venue they need, they’ll look elsewhere. Loyalty matters, too—especially for frequent travelers. Your managed program needs to cover what people actually want to book, while guiding them toward the best option for the company.  
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2. Make the managed way the easy way.
   I’ll admit it: we have a travel policy, and I’ve never read it from beginning to end. I doubt I’m alone. More rules won’t automatically change behavior. A better experience can. Make booking simple. Automate payment. Remove invoices and manual expense work wherever possible. Give travelers something they value: less effort. When your managed process is easier than booking elsewhere, adoption follows.  
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3. Show people fewer, better choices.
   More content shouldn’t mean more searching. Use traveler data and preferences to surface the options that fit. Think location, loyalty, trip purpose, traveler type, and company goals. The traveler still gets a choice. You simply make the best choices easier to find. The future isn’t about better filters. It’s about making the right option obvious.  
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4. Bring fragmented demand together.
   Your travelers don’t care whether you call a trip transient, long stay, group, or meeting. They just need somewhere to stay or meet. Build the experience around that need—not around your internal categories. Convergence also strengthens procurement. When you combine demand across segments, you can give suppliers a clearer volume commitment. That gives you more leverage at the negotiating table.  
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5. Connect your strategy to what travelers actually do.
   This is where many programs still lose value. Procurement negotiates. Travel sets the strategy. Travelers book. But the three don’t always connect. Change that. Turn your goals into clear recommendations. Push those recommendations into the places where people book. Measure what happens next. Then adjust. Plan. Recommend. Execute. Measure. Optimize. That’s how negotiated savings become realized savings.  
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MAKE ADOPTION A BUSINESS KPI

Some companies already show what’s possible.

With an integrated Source-to-Pay process, adoption can reach around 95%. And bringing previously separate procurement volumes together has delivered around 5% additional value in individual cases—without adding more travel volume.

That’s why adoption deserves more attention than a simple booking-tool KPI. It affects your buying power. Your savings. Your compliance. Your ability to steer suppliers. And ultimately, the performance of your entire lodging and meetings program.

For travel leaders, I’d start with one simple question:

Where are people leaving your managed program today and why?

Find those gaps. Fix the biggest ones first. Because the fastest route to more savings may not be another negotiation.

It may be getting more travelers to use the value you’ve already created.