How Ströer achieved 94% Hotel Program Adoption with HRS

Challenge

Ströer, one of Germany’s leading media companies with around 13,500 employees and over 300,000 analog and digital advertising offers, was facing several challenges. These included creating transparency along travel processes (especially for hotel bookings) and simplifying and standardizing booking processes. Although a booking system was in place, employees often booked their hotel stays outside managed channels, so Ströer had little overview of costs incurred and no control over expenses.

Key challenges:

• No unified and digitized processes in hotel procurement
• Insufficient data transparency

Solution

Ströer chose HRS as its tech solution partner to relaunch travel management in the hotel sector. The company sought a solution that would provide comprehensive visibility and control over costs while ensuring traveler program compliance. It also needed to be user-friendly and create value for travelers to increase adoption and ensure compliance.

Ströer selected HRS for its integrated end-to-end platform, data-centric approach, and strong focus on traveler experience.

HRS’ platform provided:

• HRS Stay: Creating the best hotel program for the business
• HRS Work: Making it easier to find ideal workspaces and meeting rooms
• HRS Pay: Removing nearly every manual step in the payment and expense process

With HRS, Ströer enables employees to have the best possible travel experience. Travelers can book the most appropriate accommodation at the best price with a few clicks. The combination of negotiated rates and HRS’ multi-source approach ensures the best possible availability and price, removing the need to book outside the managed channel.

By using virtual credit cards, Ströer eliminates manual payment steps, check-out wait times, and invoice handling errors. HRS provides consolidated views of booked and realized spend to maximize procurement results and reduce program risks.

Results

Ströer achieved substantial improvements across adoption, compliance, sustainability, and cost control:

• 94% program compliance / online adoption
• 85% spend coverage
• 7.5% savings
• 97% digital payment adoption
• 92% automatically corrected invoices
• 45% of room nights in sustainable (Green Stay) hotels
• 87% of room nights in Clean & Safe certified hotels
• High satisfaction and security scores across all hotel stays

HRS’ end-to-end platform enabled Ströer to consolidate and analyze spend, booking, and payment data, continuously optimize the program, identify deviations, improve supplier performance checks, and achieve significant savings.

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