Engine.com Interview with Lauren Hemphill

 

Universal Unilink members get a deep discount on travel with Engine.com. Go to the private member site for more information about your discount.

Universal Unilink Member Contact Information:

Customer Support 24/7
Phone: (855) 567-4683
Email: support@engine.com

Engine
950 S. Cherry Street, Suite 1000
Denver, CO 80246
Phone: (720) 999-9349
www.engine.com

Transcript:

Marty Hartman: Lauren, I am so happy that you are joining us today to tell us more about the whole transition from Hotel Engine to Engine.com. We’re really excited to learn more. So let’s get started. So tell us a little bit about What’s involved in the transition and why now?

Lauren Hemphill: Yeah. So, so much is involved in the transition. So I’ve been at Engine for over three years now. When I started we were Hotel Engine everybody always asked, Hey, are you ever going to have flights and cars? We love the functionality that you have with hotels, with the billing. It’s super easy. And my response was always probably not because there’s always such a large for just hotels. Fast forward to three years later, our CEO decided he’s going to say yes to everything that our customers need. And now we have flights and cars. So had to drop the hotel. Didn’t really make sense when we offer much more than hotels. So we now are an all in one and you can book your hotels, flights, and cars. to answer your question as to why we just wanted to evolve, offer what our customers needed so we could truly help them out in all areas of their travel business.

Marty Hartman: I think that’s fantastic that you’re increasing the capabilities of the company and I do want to mention we have used Hotel Engine for years . And we love it. I’ve also talked to some other people in the Industry. for example, a multiline rep that does a lot of traveling.

He’s been using it. The ease of use and the savings is great. So, tell us a little bit more about how. Our members are going to benefit by getting signed up with Engine. com.

Lauren Hemphill: Definitely. They can really benefit from, like you mentioned, the cost savings, ease of use. We have access to over 750, 000 Properties for hotels. we’ve with over 250 airlines and over 40 rental car companies.

So I always say there needs to be a platform to, and I’m sure there is somewhere, but if somebody uses this business idea, you owe me money. But somewhere where you can just go and pull up all of your event tickets in one place. Cause I always forget what app they’re in. So now you can go to, Your engine app, you can go to engine. com, you can book all flights that you’ll need, your hotels, and your rental cars. So ease of use is there, cost savings, we have negotiated rates with all of our suppliers so that companies are getting that best rate without having to go out, negotiate it on their own, and deal with the back and forth that comes into that with, with different Properties. we also have, the ability to do groups bookings. So coming up with holiday time, a lot of companies are doing the in person parties now. So we have the capability where you could go in and request a hundred rooms in Florida for your holiday party. And our team will go out and negotiate rates with those hotels and take that completely off your budget. Event team or in some cases the office managers plate. We also have access to FlexPro Which is a slightly newer offering that we have I would say it came out last year or so But it allows companies to modify Stays up until noon the day of check in they can shorten stays without penalties So it just really adds on to that cost savings not losing money on the that they’re not using in hotels because plans change, as

Marty Hartman: Absolutely.

Lauren Hemphill: on the backend, my favorite part, we have a ton of reporting tools that will allow you to go in, pull a single report, view all the spend for. Your travel and you’ll be able to just see that without having accounting, make a report, have multiple platforms for it. So the reporting features on the back end are also a very big win for our members.

Marty Hartman: Oh, absolutely. Keeping all of that in one place. Fantastic. Going to make it a lot easier for our members that are doing. Any traveling and especially for business. And if you have to report to an accounting department,

one place to get all of the information. Well, that’s fantastic. You mentioned savings.

What can our members expect as far as savings for their travel?

Lauren Hemphill: Yeah. So we offer up to 60 percent off of hotels. So you’ll see some on there that are less on Engine versus other platforms. Average savings though is about 26%. So we’re not going to be 60 percent higher on everything or lower. Unfortunately, I wish we were, but average of 26 percent off is what your members could expect from engine.

Marty Hartman: That’s great. Let’s start anywhere we can. When I talk with business owners, the two things that they are short supply or things that they’re always trying to save is time and money. And sounds like you’re addressing both of those. So the big question is if I save time and money, that’s great, but how easy is it to use engine.

com?

Lauren Hemphill: It is extremely easy. So we have engine. com. We also have an app. Fun fact, more than half of our bookings are actually done through our mobile app. So it’s super easy to use. I always like to tell people I got my grandpa on Engine when I first started because he travels a lot for fun now It used to be for work, but he’s very familiar with traveling and the different platforms you can use so He had a vacation.

I was like, Hey, try this out.

No training, no context, just got him logged in and he booked a trip on his own. So I would say it’s the easiest booking platform to use out of any of the ones that I’ve had experience with to get set up on, it’s also extremely easy. Your members have a link that they follow.

We have a sales team. That can help because we can customize the account in different ways to help each company that we work with. Yeah, the start to finish is, is easy.

Marty Hartman: That’s great. So do you think you could show us a demo of how the site works? Absolutely. And I will show you, a few of my favorites. Like I said, we can always go into this further and make sure that we’re answering the questions specific for each company we’re working with. But let’s go ahead and start with the dashboard. So this has been updated recently. So if you’ve been on Hotel Engine before the reband, you saw something slightly different.

So, even more clean than it was before. You can see, you can do stays, flights, or cars. So I’m going to start with a stay. Let’s say I want to go to Denver because that’s where I’m from. One thing that’s neat here too, you can put in the city and state. You can be as specific as putting in the address for the location that you’re going to.

If you have a conference center, if you want to stay close to the airport, you can really put in anything in that search bar to make sure that you’re getting close to where you’re going. And I try not to be a last minute booker, but we work with many of who are. also work with some who can’t control but to book same day.

So if

Lauren Hemphill: you a book same day, you can. You can actually book a stay and check into the hotel. They give us about 30 minutes for the communication, but I’ve had customers tell me they Book in the parking lot and walk into the hotel and their room is ready. So can definitely

last

minute stays, which is fun. Simply choose how many people are going to be in the room, how many rooms you need. Quick call out here. If you do need let’s say you’re going somewhere, you have a conference that you’re attending. You need 12 rooms. You could technically do two bookings, six rooms each, but it’ll stop you at eight rooms on the platform. If you need more than that, simply go to create a groups request, Let us know how many you need and we’ll actually go to the hotels and negotiate more of a group rate. Or if you’re booking a stay for longer than 28 days, regardless of how many people are going, that could also go through our groups team where we can negotiate. Directly with the hotels on your behalf. And you can just put in all the specifics that you want us to look for.

Marty Hartman: Well, great. So

we’ll. Our members can have somebody doing all the negotiating with the hotels for us. That’s, it sounds great to me.

Lauren Hemphill: exactly. And they also have a reconciliation team too. So I know in the past I’ve gone to hotels, gotten the folio at the end, need to make sure it matches up my credit card. Everything looks good. If it doesn’t contact customer service, talk through it. So we actually have an entire team that handles that for you.

So when you’re billed by Hotel Engine or by Engine, rather, you will, know that it’s correct.

Marty Hartman: Oh, that’s good. So even after the stay, you can still work with our members in case there’s any issues.

Lauren Hemphill: Absolutely. Yep. And all of the members always have an account manager with Engine as well. we have a sales team that works with new business, helps get people set up initially. And then we have an account management team and a great member support team. They’re all us based, fantastic to work with, they help with any ongoing support. If any questions come up, you need to change the account at all. You just have, you have a ton of support here at Engine, which is one of my favorite things.

Marty Hartman: I’m sure that some of our, our members are watching this and saying, but I’ve got a points program with a certain airline or a certain hotel chain, so I can’t use this platform.

Lauren Hemphill: So I’m so glad you brought that up. You actually can. So one thing you can do here in the search. So let’s say you’re going to Denver like I mentioned before, 750, 000 properties globally. So this is not just us. If you’re going somewhere in Europe, you can book hotels in Europe on Engine. Uh, but you’ll see, I have 70 results here. So then. You can sort by distance, best price, star rating. I’m one of the weirdos that likes to sort things by most expensive, because I feel like it’s going to be a nicer place. So I like to say what’s most expensive and work my way down. Not when Engine’s paying for it, don’t worry.

Marty Hartman: Right.

Lauren Hemphill: Personal trips. going back to your question with the loyalty, I’m also big on points. If you’re going to earn points for staying somewhere that you’re already staying, you might as well, right? So, most online booking platforms, you cannot those points. With Engine, you can, as long as you’re booking the loyalty eligible hotel and room. Let’s say I’m a Hilton Honors person. You’ll see this little purple icon here. So this means that this hotel does have loyalty eligible hotel rooms. So

say I want to stay here. Looks good. You can see it over here on the map as well. One thing that I really like about our search engine is if you want to compare some hotels, cause you got to compare and contrast before you just go in and pick one, you can click on it and it’ll open it in different tabs for you. way you can take a look, see the address, the amenities.

The reviews, which are pulled from multiple sources. So reviews are not just engine customers. They’re pulled from Google, other booking platforms, obviously engine customers too. But you can review those. And then once you’ve determined which one you like. You can go right here to choose a room. You’re going to choose which hotel room you want. The call out here is if you are wanting to get your loyalty points, you want to make sure that you are booking a room that has the loyalty eligible icon there.

Marty Hartman: Okay, good to know.

Lauren Hemphill: is big because if you don’t have that, it won’t let you put your number in. Some hotels will let you add it when you get there.

I don’t ever like to promise that because it’s not guaranteed. if you do it this way,

Marty Hartman: You’re guaranteed to get your points. so you’ll put in the guest information. Say I’m looking for myself. I’m going to add in my loyalty here, save that. And then you would just go to complete booking after you’ve confirmed everything looks correct you’ll be good to go.

Okay, so this also works if we have a, particular airline that we want to work with that gives us points. Yes,

That’s great.

Lauren Hemphill: it does.

Yes. And we also have the option for direct bill. So you can see on my booking since our account is set up as individual travelers booking their engine travel. We also have one where we’re booking our personal travel. So for all your members, they can also have something called a perk account, which essentially is set up for, personal travel for employees, because many times we have two people at organizations that are booking all the travel, which is fantastic. They can set up a personal booking account within the business account. But let’s say you have other employees who would love to get the same discounts on their hotels and flights and cars, but they’re not booking business travel, so we can set up a perk account for them purely just for their personal travel.

They have to pay with their credit card, use their personal email address, they can benefit from the same savings as well.

Marty Hartman: That sounds great. Well, thank you so much for sharing all of the updates with engine. com. Adding the expanded capabilities, I think it’s going to make it a lot easier for our members to plan traveling, whether for business or for private. pleasure. Anything else you want to tell our members before we end this session?

Lauren Hemphill: One thing to call out on this site as well that I, is one of the bigger reasons why Companies switch over to engine is because we have this trips tab on here. this will hold all of the trip information as soon as you book it. So unlike booking direct with a hotel or through other platforms where you’re getting the folio or receipt for the. Booking at the end of this day you’ll actually get that as soon as you book. And then if there’s any changes that would be modified that way accounting has visibility and everything that’s going on. You can go in and pull the information and expense it when you need to. And this is a really cool thing.

Cause you can see for coordinators sometimes people in HR really like to see where people are. you can go in and see exactly where your teams are. You can also pull it by calendar and see where people are today, this week, next week. So just a little call out there, just extra functionality.

That’s usually a, a big hit from our customers.

Marty Hartman: Making complex information easily available is a big plus.

Lauren Hemphill: Definitely.

Marty Hartman: Well, Lauren, thank you so much for spending time with us. And I hope our members check out engine. com.

Lauren Hemphill: Absolutely. And I’m always available on LinkedIn, email, phone, if anybody has questions, but I’m looking forward to talking to more of your members.

Marty Hartman: Great. We’ll keep your contact information when we send out this interview

Lauren Hemphill: Amazing.

Marty Hartman: sure that they get it.

Lauren Hemphill: Thank you so much, Marty.

Marty Hartman: Thank you, Lauren.