Simple travel tweaks lighten the load for Inter-Marine. Switching to our SmartFLY and SmartSTAY programs led to huge savings and a big efficiency boost.
What does Inter-Marine do?
Inter-Marine provides maintenance, specialist repairs and technical services for clients in the heavy marine industry including commercial, merchant and cruise operators.
Our travel partnership
We organise all flight and accommodation bookings, specialist itineraries and logistical support for the Inter-Marine.
The Inter-Marine travel program requires around 300 flight bookings and 150 nights of accommodation in Australia, Asia, the USA and South America every year.
So many destination, so little time
Inter-Marine often required flights and accommodation at short notice. These last-minute bookings presented a significant cost hurdle, particularly with domestic flights, as Inter-Marine had no preferred fare arrangement with an airline.
Inter-Marine's large number of destinations also made airline loyalty difficult for long-haul bookings. The regular extensions, random travel dates and inconsistent arrival and departure points had created a complex and slow booking cycle.
The company’s accommodation needs also posed cost and availability challenges. Finding hotels that were close to ports meant sourcing rooms at short notice was tough.
Excess luggage charges were another recurring cost burden as travellers were regularly carrying heavy tools and technical equipment.
Plotting a new course
We knew that reducing the cost of last-minute bookings would be the key to significant, sustained savings for Inter-Marine. The first step was addressing booking inefficiencies.
We assigned a dedicated team to give Inter-Marine some extra hands and reduce its booking turnaround times.
Next, we switched Inter-Marine’s domestic airfare spend to Virgin Australia through our SmartFLY program. SmartFLY would give them increased passenger benefits, fare discounts and an annual airfare rebate which would help cut the cost burden of last minute bookings.
We also introduced Inter-Marine to our SmartSTAY accommodation program to increase traveller benefits through free accommodation extras.
The bottom line
Switching to SmartFLY saved Inter-Marine approximately $3,200 in 2016. These savings were compounded by our ability to automate airline credits through our booking system which recouped around $4,000 in unused airfares that year.
Simply changing purchasing behavior ended up saving Inter-Marine more than $65,000 on international airfares in the 2016 calendar year.
Booking preferred SmartSTAY hotels gave Inter-Marine more value for every dollar spent on accommodation and reduced traveller expense claims through free extras including in-room Wi-Fi, breakfast and room upgrades.
We were also able to make the booking process faster and more efficient by migrating its booking system to our dedicated online booking tool and proactively managing its traveller profiles, passport info and visa requirements.