Hotels revolutionise procurement to streamline guest services and cut costs

In hotels, the most important work is often the work guests never see. Room turnarounds, replenished amenities and dependable service all depend on a back-office system that runs smoothly enough to stay out of sight. When it does not, the gaps are quickly obvious: a missing shampoo bottle, a short supply of coffee cups or a delayed delivery can become a front-desk problem within hours.

For Ashley Hubka, SVP and general manager at Walmart Business, the lesson is that procurement...

is not merely an administrative chore. It is a daily operational discipline that can either absorb staff time or free teams to focus on guests. She points to survey data from more than 500 business decision-makers across several industries, including hospitality, showing that 37% spend four to seven hours each week on routine purchasing. In a sector where margins are tight and service expectations are high, that is time most operators can ill afford to lose.

The burden is compounded by the number of suppliers hotels typically manage. The same survey found that 87% of respondents work with multiple vendors, while nearly 40% said handling orders, accounts and invoices across those suppliers was among their biggest challenges. In hospitality, that fragmentation is familiar. Linens may come from one provider, cleaning supplies from another, food and beverage items from a third and maintenance goods from yet another. Each relationship brings its own processes, contacts and delivery timings.

Those pressures are felt most sharply in food and beverage operations, where purchasing is frequent and failures are immediately visible. Hotel Management has reported that hoteliers are leaning more heavily on long-term supplier relationships as costs rise, storage space remains limited and lead times on some items stretch out for months. In that environment, a late shipment or an unavailable product can quickly disrupt breakfast service, housekeeping rounds or maintenance schedules.

Recent hotel-industry moves suggest procurement is becoming a strategic priority rather than a purely operational one. G6 Hospitality, the parent of Motel 6 and Studio 6, has launched G6 Marketplace, an enterprise procurement platform intended to centralise sourcing across its franchise network. Hotel Business said the system gives franchisees a single interface for ordering supplies, seeking consistent pricing and reducing the burden of managing numerous vendors. AAHOA has also unveiled AAHOA Marketplace with Avendra International, offering members a central purchasing hub aimed at lowering costs and simplifying operations.

At industry events, the same theme has been echoed repeatedly. A Hotel Business Hot Topics session on optimising procurement to improve returns brought together executives from Remington Hospitality, Atrium Hospitality, Choice Hotels and Entegra/Sodexo. Their discussion focused on how technology, collaboration and stronger supplier relationships can help operators cope with volatile costs and shifting guest expectations.

Hubka’s argument is that hotels do not need to transform purchasing overnight to see benefits. The first step is to identify where the greatest friction lies: which items are reordered most often, which suppliers demand the most follow-up, which purchases could be standardised and where one supplier might cover multiple categories. From there, centralised purchasing tools can reduce duplication, improve visibility over spend and make it easier to keep track of delivery schedules and order histories.

That approach, she suggests, matters because suppliers are increasingly being judged as operational partners, not just providers. Survey data cited in her article found that 85% of respondents want suppliers to feel like part of their team. For hotel operators, that means dependable availability, clear pricing and simple reordering are no longer nice-to-haves. They are part of the infrastructure of service.

The broader point is that procurement shapes the guest experience more directly than it is often given credit for. A well-run ordering system can help ensure rooms are ready on time, breakfast is stocked, housekeeping is equipped and maintenance issues are resolved before they become complaints. In an industry where every hour and every margin point matters, that may be one of the clearest opportunities to improve performance without adding complexity.

Source: Noah Wire Services