MITIGATING PRICE INCREASES AND SAVING TIME THROUGH A PROCUREMENT PARTNERSHIP

Written by Pierre Burignat Operations Manager Hotels Libertel

otels Libertel is a group of five ideally situated hotels around Paris, France, all providing travellers with a comfortable and convenient stay.

However, like many hospitality businesses, the hotel group has faced its fair share of challenges over the last few years – from price increases to product shortages.

We spoke with Pierre Burignat, Operations Manager at Hotels Libertel, who shares more about these challenges and how Trinity has helped support their operations throughout their sixyear partnership.

Introduction

We started to work with Trinity six years ago to benefit from their purchasing power and extend the list of our supplier partners. Since our partnership began, they have helped us through several challenges, saving us time and money, and we have built a relationship of trust over the years.

Operational challenges

Since the start of the pandemic, we have had a lot to manage, especially on the operational side. Regarding supplier purchasing, we have had to deal with product shortages and certain suppliers going out of business. The biggest challenge has been the sharp price increases, particularly for energy.

Mitigating price increases

During this time, Trinity introduced us to alternative suppliers to replace those out of business, saving us time. Recently, they have helped us through the energy increases by advising us of an energy broker and organised a webinar on energy which was very informative!

Trinity has also helped us save money – with food and non-food areas, including hygiene & chemicals. We now have a great collaboration with Ecolab – the prices provided through this Trinity partnership have been great.

We appreciate them monitoring the prices in the market across all the categories, always helping us to mitigate any price increases.

Supplier management and support

The Trinity team helps us find the right supplier partners, provides benchmarking and quotations, and negotiates the best rates for us. When we have problems with suppliers, they help us solve them. We save a lot of time by not having to do this ourselves, and we can instead concentrate on our operations – providing the best experience for our guests.

Digital technology

We plan to use the Pi ordering system in all our hotels to save more time on orders. We will start with a pilot hotel and gradually roll it out to the group.

A strategic partner you can trust

I would recommend Trinity Purchasing to any hotel and restaurant colleagues to help them save money and for the operational support and responsiveness that the Trinity team provides.