Edvour
Find out how Edvour was able to book hotels from different parts of the world for their educational trips using Cvent Supplier Network.
Simplified Venue Sourcing through Cvent Supplier Network
As part of its mission to host educational programmes for schools, Edvour organises educational trips for students from the Indian subcontinent to 12 countries across the globe. Part of the arrangements for these trips involve booking hotel rooms for the student groups at the desired destinations.
“Once a school group is finalised for a trip, we send RFPs to search for rooms for the finalised dates. We already have a participant list with us that tells us the number of rooms we’d require. Then we also have a certain budget in our mind. Once we have all these requirements ready with us, we float an RFP,” says Ajay Yadav, the Chief Operating Officer at Edvour.
Before Cvent came into the picture, the hotel sourcing process was dealt with manually. “We used to do a lot of Excel sheets, and then used to make enquires and send RFPs via emails or phone calls to the hotel contacts we found on Google. Then we’d compare the rates with different agents and with past hotels to find the best deal,” says Ajay.
After Edvour started using Cvent, the process became a lot simpler. “After using Cvent Supplier Network (CSN) everything has become easier. Because now you have everything in one place. You can compare the hotels faster and turnaround time is greatly reduced.” Adds Ajay, “Once we receive the responses from interested properties, we analyse and compare them to finalise the rates most suitable to us. If needed, we respond to the proposals asking to negotiate the rates further – all via CSN.”
Another plus about using CSN is the ratings of the hotels. “Even though we sourced for budget hotels, we also ensured that these hotels had high ratings. Initially, we used to look at the Google rating, but now we rely on the different ratings available on CSN.”
Getting More Value through Cvent Supplier Network
Using CSN, Edvour was able to source an average of 20 RFPs per year for venue. Since CSN ensured faster turnaround times, it meant that what took them 3-4 weeks to source a property now took them as low as 1 hour a day. Which further meant that where earlier Edvour had 2-3 people handling their venue sourcing, they now only needed one person to do that job.
Edvour also loved the fact that they were now getting better deals from hotels after using CSN. “They lower the price since you’re now directly interacting with the concerned person via CSN. Earlier, the conversation used to go through the sales team.”
Ajay sums up Edvour’s overall experience with Cvent with these words: “We have been using Cvent for a long time. All the enquiries and RFPs we have been sending are through CSN. And then we also have been interacting with newer hotels – because we have a huge requirement for hotel rooms for our groups. And Cvent has a good pool of hotels globally – so it becomes easy for us to connect with various hotels from different parts of the world.”