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Tight policy secures annual hotel deals.

Article Excerpt
Three years after creating a policy for corporate meetings management and moving the department under corporate transient travel, Piscataway, N.J.-based American Standard Companies has developed a program in which hotel rates for small corporate meetings are negotiated once a year along with transient negotiations. Currently, about a dozen chains participate in the program in 15 designated cities.

"We pre-negotiate a contract once a year that covers all the meetings scheduled at that location and then we have that guaranteed rate throughout the year," said Ernest Guerra, Nashville, Tenn.-based director of global travel and meeting services for American Standard Business Services. "Typically, we'll have two properties--in case one is full--and sometimes three, depending on the size of the city."

Internal compliance was crucial to the success of the small meetings program, Guerra said, and American Standard had to show it could deliver its volume commitments to its preferred hotels. That process was aided by the policy, created in 2003, that dictates all...

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