Pharmaceutical distribution centre
Spain

One of the largest corporate travel agencies in Spain managed the travel and temporary accommodation required for automating a pharmaceutical company’s logistics centre in Spain.

6 mounths

34 professionals

Using the Apartool platform they requested, compared and confirmed all their accommodation needs in less than 48 hours. In addition, the system served them as a “rooming organiser” for the entire stay, and invoicing was “a piece of cake” according to our client.

As the third largest corporate agency on the Iberian Peninsula, we manage the travel requirements of leading companies in Spain. For more than 25 years we’ve been taking care of flights, trains, transfers, stays and travel for our clients; but recently, requests for temporary accommodation and long stays in apartments have increased exponentially. In fact, I firmly believe that this is here to stay.

My role as Account Manager handling one of the leading pharmaceutical companies in Spain provides me with visibility in the firm’s major projects, as well as in the travel and relocation plans of all its employees and partners.

Given the growing demand for temporary corporate accommodation and our constant innovations aimed at providing our customers with maximum value, we decided, together with our Suppliers’ Director, to include Apartool as a trusted provider of temporary accommodation at all our destinations, both domestic and international.

The challenge

Our client in the pharmaceutical sector started an automation project for one of its largest logistics and storage centres in Spain. An immense number of pharmaceutical and industrial products are stocked there. For this reason, engineers, technicians, fitters and support personnel were deployed: a total of 34 professionals for a stay of four months, which became six months.

From the outplant we coordinated the travel and accommodation of these 34 people, offering the best service and the highest quality. The dates of arrival of the operatives, as well as the duration of their stays, were all different, their requirements and budget were limited and they had specific requests regarding the location and size of the apartments

The solution

Bearing in mind that Apartool is our preferred provider of temporary accommodation and that we trust them with the long stays for many of our accounts, we had no hesitation whatsoever.

Thanks to the platform offered by Apartool and its multi-request functionality, we met all the requirements and their specificities. We thus had a very clear idea of how the “rooming” of the project would work, the arrivals and departures of the employees as well as who would occupy each apartment.

The Apartool team immediately understood the scope of the project and the needs of our client, so in less than 48 hours we had multiple options for each of our requests entered into the system. Between our team and our client, we chose the ones that best matched the requirements and confirmed them online.

Lastly, we managed the entire project through Apartool: confirmation, client vouchers, entry instructions and stay extensions, among other back and forth interchanges of information.

How Apartool and its technology have helped

Our main reason for working with Apartool is the overriding need to unify our temporary accommodation requests for multiple destinations, payments in euros, invoicing and the booking policies. In addition, the fact that the supplier is registered with our agency makes things much easier. We have projects in Germany with this same pharmaceutical customer, so having standard qualities, conditions and policies makes our life easier.

At the technology level, Apartool’s platform gives us an overview of the entire project as well as other individual requests we had at the time. We have access to our requests, the Apartool team’s proposals, the customers who are about to enter, those who are already within each Apartool Home and all our past reservations at our fingertips in real time and in the same place.

However, what made our work easier in this project was the fact that we could share the online quotation with the client and even with the workers involved in the travelling: thanks to the platform we have the option of hiding the prices of the apartments and sharing the link for the online quotation with the relocated employee. He or she can then choose the apartment where they will be staying for the next few months!

Opinion on the future of corporate housing

As I mentioned earlier, our clients are increasingly requesting apartments to meet their temporary housing needs. At our agency we had hotel chains that offered “kitchenettes” in some of their tourist accommodation options; but of course this does not make relocated people feel at home.

Thanks to the rise of collaborative platforms geared towards the end customer such as Airbnb and Homeaway, the apartment has become a global trend; but these platforms do not meet the needs of the corporate client, let alone the travel agency. Therefore, a solution adapted and designed specifically for this segment was needed.