When you manage construction projects, you have to travel – a lot. Whether you’re the foreman, project manager, travel coordinator, or general administrator you have to make sure your contractor crews have the rooms they need when they need them. Even if it’s a last minute project, or if there are ongoing delays keeping everyone away longer than expected.
Whatever the story, accommodation fees add up quickly. In fact, lodging fees make up 26% of total travel costs.
It's why in the recent guest article UNA wrote for ForConstructionPros, we focused on how you can reduce hotel costs. Keep reading to find out the five reasons why your construction crew lodging is costing you more than you think, and how to stop overspending.
Why You're Paying Too Much for Your Construction Hotels
There are several reasons, we go into each in-depth in the post, but the quick overview is:
- With most online hotel booking tools the price you see isn't the price you get
- You don't have time to negotiate a discount with each hotel
- Manual travel processes take too much time (which as we all know is money)
- Booking travel on the fly is a huge liability
- Juggling multiple travelers, trips, and billing situations quickly becomes complicated
- Your crews can't get the customer service they need when they need it
One of the biggest reasons you're paying too much is that you can't accurately track expenses. As we said in the blog:
If your spend isn’t transparent, neither is your budget. One of the most common problems with construction travel is that costs usually can’t be accurately estimated... What makes UNA’s hotel solution unique, is that you get price transparency on the total cost of your hotel rooms up front. As well as accurate expense evaluations after the trips are over.
Below is an example of the kind of expense analytics you can get with our free hotel booking platform.