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Reduce Travel Expenses For Your Company

March 19, 2010
At Creative Lodging Solutions, we provide our clients proven methods for reducing long-term lodging expenses. We eliminate unapproved incidental charges and incorrect hotel charges while reducing no show and late check-out fees. CLS also manages client’s room requirements and ensures travel policy compliance.

Creative Lodging Solutions’ reservation specialists leverage a multi-million dollar buying power while aggressively negotiating the best rates with hotels and apartments. We offer an average rate savings of 12 – 19.3%.

Together, these initiatives provide a significant savings in rates, time, and administrative costs throughout the year delivering more profit for our clients.

If your company has long-term or project based lodging needs and could benefit from a service that will enhance your travel program and still reduce your overall lodging expenses, contact us. We’ll develop a cost-saving plan designed specifically for your company and put the power of CLS to work for you.

One call… One bill… One solution.

http://www.yourcls.com

Enhancing Your Travel Program

February 17, 2010

Are your employees diverting attention away from your core business to find hotel rooms?  If so, are they equipped to get the best rate available on every reservation?  Creative Lodging Solutions allows companies to refocus while we handle their long-term and project based lodging needs.

In today’s business environment of lean staffs and tight budgets, we know how important it is to direct all your resources toward growing your bottom line.  Finding the best hotel room at the lowest rate every time is our core business.

If your company has long-term or project based lodging needs and could benefit from a service that will enhance your travel program, unburden your team from travel task management, and still reduce your overall lodging expenses, contact us.  We can help.  Put the power of CLS to work for you.

One call… one bill… one solution.

Knowledge is Power

February 4, 2010

At Creative Lodging Solutions, we believe that knowledge is power.  We offer our clients the ability to track their company’s long-term lodging expenses so they know exactly what they’re spending, where their travelers are staying, and if company guidelines are followed.

Our proprietary software, Web Genesis, enables our clients to make their lodging requests, track reservations, view invoices, view invoice payment status, and track their spending.   Creative Lodging Solutions also offers clients a complete quarterly statistics pack which details spending patterns and outlines the potential for additional savings.  Together, Web Genesis and our quarterly reports assist clients in budgeting and cost control.

If your company has long-term or project based lodging needs, Creative Lodging Solutions can help you manage your costs and reduce your travel expense.

One call… One bill… One solution

Creative Lodging Solutions Named One of the Best Places to Work in Kentucky

February 4, 2010

Lexington, KY – Creative Lodging Solutions is named one of the Best Places to Work in Kentucky 2010.  They will be recognized and honored at the Best Places to Work in Kentucky awards ceremony on April 21 in Lexington, KY. 

 

This statewide survey and awards program identifies, recognizes, and honors the best places of employment in Kentucky, benefiting the state’s economy, its workforce and businesses.  The Best Places to Work in Kentucky 2010 list is made up of 64 companies and Creative Lodging Solutions has been named as one of these.

 

Companies from across the state entered the two-part process to determine the Best Places to Work in Kentucky.  The first part consisted of evaluating each nominated company’s workplace policies, practices, and demographics.  This part of the process was worth approximately 25% of the total evaluation.  The second part consisted of an employee survey to measure the employee experience.  This part of the process was worth approximately 75% of the total evaluation.  The combined scores determined the top companies and the final ranking.  Best Companies Group managed the overall registration and survey process in Kentucky and also analyzed the data to determine the final rankings. 

 

The awards program was created in 2005 and is a project of the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, Kentucky SHRM Council, and Best Companies Group. 

 

Creative Lodging Solutions, a Lexington, Kentucky based corporate lodging services company, was founded in 2002 by Michael Tetterton, Marsha Couch, and Carolyn Hundley.  CLS provides lodging solutions for corporate clients nationwide.  In 2007, Creative Lodging Solutions was ranked 47th in Entrepreneur magazine’s Hot 500 list of America’s top fastest growing businesses.  

 

For more information about Creative Lodging Solutions, visit http://www. yourcls.com or contact Craig Baughman, Executive Vice-President, at 859-381-1825.

What’s the REAL cost of your travel program? Find out how to save with Creative Lodging Solutions.

February 2, 2010

Find it Easy to Enforce Travel Policy

January 28, 2010
Is your company’s travel policy really controlling costs? Or, like most companies, have you found it difficult to enforce?

At Creative Lodging Solutions, we specialize in corporate lodging for long-term stays and assist our clients in enforcing their individual travel policies. The specifications of the policies are loaded into the company profiles so each stay we book fits within those parameters.

One of our clients reduced their total lodging costs roughly 35% after partnering with Creative Lodging Solutions because we assisted in enforcing their double up policy. We manage the reservations to ensure those who were supposed to double did and any necessary exceptions are reported back to the company. Our proprietary software, Genesis, allows our clients complete control over who may request hotel reservations which prevents fraudulent or unauthorized stays, further reducing unnecessary expense.

If your company has long-term or project based lodging needs, Creative Lodging Solutions can help you enforce your travel policy, manage your costs, and reduce your expense.

One Call… One Bill… One Solution

Simplicity

January 15, 2010

Tired of having to sort through all those extra charges on your business trip hotel bills?  Do you think your company may have paid for unauthorized hotel charges last year that accidentally slipped through?

At Creative Lodging Solutions, we guarantee our clients that no unauthorized charges will ever appear on their bills.  Our clients select in advance what charges are authorized, such as room, tax, fax, etc., and that’s all they’re billed for.  If a hotel does try to bill an unauthorized charge, we take up the fight on our client’s behalf and relieve them of any responsibility for the charge.

Creative Lodging Solutions audits every hotel invoice for our clients and we’ve found that hotels make mistakes or place additional charges on hotel folios an average of 26% of the time.  We’ve found everything from extra nightly surcharges to unauthorized incidental charges and sometimes even the wrong rates.   We then get the charges adjusted before our clients ever see the bill.

Creative Lodging Solutions guarantees that no unauthorized charges will show up on our client’s hotel bills and completely eliminates that possibility.  It’s that simple.

Weird and Wacky Accomodations in the U.S.

January 12, 2010
I came across these weird locations by reading an article, written by Jane McLean.

 

The Harvey House Railway Hotel, currently known as La Posada Hotel National Historic Landmark – Winslow, Arizona, complete with trains just out the back door, macabre art by the artist-owner, and a marvelous gourmet restaurant.

 

The Southeast U.S. offers quirky and strange lodging options, from elegant icons to shacky chic curiosities. (See photos here.)
An overnight at the Alaska Icefield Expeditions B&B begins with a helicopter ride from Juneau. Accommodation is in a small hut on the ice and guests get the chance to drive a dog-sled – in the middle of the summer.

 

Read more here.
If you have stayed at, know of, or personally own a weird and wacky spot, please share it with us.

Six Ways to Save Money with Creative Lodging Solutions

January 4, 2010

1. Hotel Rate Savings – Spending more than you need to for a hotel room takes away money that could be better used to grow your own business.  Through its established hotel partnerships and buying power Creative Lodging Solutions saves its clients an average of 19.3% compared to internet rates.  Creative Lodging Solutions has already done the research and negotiated excellent rates at over 6,000 hotels nationwide.  For longer term stays, Creative Lodging Solutions will negotiate directly with hotels in the area to secure even better rates. We then set up direct billing with the hotel of your choice, make all your reservations, and handle all of the billing.

2. Consolidated Billing- Our consolidated billing service eliminates the need to sort through and process multiple hotel invoices.  Our Creative Lodging Solutions proprietary software “Genesis” truly is customer flexible. Our billing system was created from a client’s point of view and gives us the ability to sort billing and invoices by date range, job site, job number, project number, person, region, division and just about any other parameters you’d find helpful. We can also code your stays with your accounting codes to make them data input ready once they are approved, or we can electronically transfer data directly into your accounting software to totally eliminate the data input function. Most of our customers have found the hidden savings in using Creative Lodging Solutions, which is the manpower reduction in receiving, sorting, coding, data input, and payment of multiple invoices. One client went from processing 35,000 hotel invoices and cutting 7,000 checks per year to just one invoice and one check per week after joining Creative Lodging Solutions. The client estimated savings of over $150,000 for this alone. To see a short video about the advantages of consolidated billing visit www.yourcls.com/movie.

3. Creative Lodging Solutions guarantees that no unauthorized charges will ever appear on your bill. You select the authorized charges such as room, tax, fax, etc. and that’s all you’ll be billed for. If the hotel does try to bill an unauthorized charge, we take up the fight on your behalf and relieve you of any responsibility for the charge. CLS audits every hotel invoice as part of our process and we find that hotels make mistakes or place additional charges on hotel folios an average of 26% of the time. We find $2 per night safe charges, $3 per night surcharges, unauthorized phone and other incidental charges, not to mention the wrong rates! Creative Lodging Solutions ELIMINATES this possibility and GUARANTEES that no unauthorized charges will show up on your bill.

4. Enforcing your travel policy. We have found that many companies have a travel policy in place that is meant to control costs but few actually enforce it. Creative Lodging Solutions will enforce your travel policy without you having to be the bad guy. One of our clients reduced their total lodging costs roughly 35% because their policy of “all employees must double up” was not enforced. When CLS took over, that became the properly enforced standard and we actually reported back to the company all exceptions to the policy, leading to marked savings.  Additionally, through our proprietary software, Genesis, you can control who, within your company, can make hotel reservations which gives your company a greater level of control over travel expenditures.

5. Tracking and Reports-Through Web Genesis, Creative Lodging Solutions’ proprietary software, you can make lodging requests, track reservations, view invoices and payment status, and track spending.  Knowing to the penny what you’ve spent in travel is crucial to controlling those costs. An additional benefit Creative Lodging Solutions offers is a complete quarterly statistic pack that details spending patterns and outlines potential for additional savings.  This can assist greatly in controlling costs and is very useful for budgeting purposes.

6. Time to focus on your core business. The time and money you save by partnering with Creative Lodging Solutions can be spent growing your own bottom line.  In today’s environment of lean staffs and tight budgets, it’s important to make every dollar count and to utilize your staff to its best potential.  Creative Lodging Solutions can help.  Any way you look at it, when your staff spends time researching hotels, negotiating rates, setting up direct bills, making hotel reservations, managing compliance, sorting and coding bills, and processing payments, they are spending time on activities apart from your core business.  Partnering with Creative Lodging Solutions can make your staff more productive, save your company an average of 19.3% in hotel charges and reduce processing and payment costs.

When you think about all the advantages we can offer, why wouldn’t you choose to partner with Creative Lodging Solutions?  The time and money we save our clients translates into something every company wants: a more productive staff and a better bottom line.  In a recent survey of our clients performed by an independent firm, 100% of our clients said that Creative Lodging Solutions either met or exceeded their expectations.  And when asked if they had it to do all over again, would they choose Creative Lodging Solutions, 100% answered “yes”.  It’s that kind of commitment to customer satisfaction that led to CLS being named the 47th fastest growing company in America by Entrepreneur Magazine. And the results that we deliver will make partnering with Creative Lodging Solutions one of the best and most profitable decisions that you can make this year.

Get Extra Money in Your Travel Budget

December 23, 2009

Is your company spending more than it needs to on hotel rooms for your corporate travelers?  This takes away money that could be better used to grow your business.  Creative Lodging Solutions has excellent negotiated rates at over 6,000 hotels nationwide.  Through its established hotel partnerships and extensive buying power, Creative Lodging Solutions saves its clients an average of 19.3% off available internet rates.  What would your company do with an extra 19.3% in your travel budget next year?

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