U.S. Communities Offers Travel Services through HotelPlanner

U.S. Communities unveiled its latest offering for county users: HotelPlanner, a travel solutions contract designed to provide custom travel services and booking portals tailored to support each county user’s guidelines. HotelPlanner, accessed via hotelplanner.com, has been described in The New York Times as the “go-to” travel solutions because of its cutting-edge technology, expert negotiators and tailored portals.

By using HotelPlanner, counties nationwide will incur no booking fees for any offered product, meetings software, multiple channel discounts, cost-center reports and disaster-support operations from the company. It offers individual services including reservations for hotels, flights, rental cars, shuttle and ground transporta­tion, and extended travel. There are more than 200,000 lodging options, 156 flight partners and 16 rental car options.

HotelPlanner is owned and oper­ated by Lexyl Travel Technologies, LLC, the leading provider of online services to the global group hotel sales market. Provided in 23 languages and operating in over 100 countries, HotelPlanner’s technology provides instant rates and instant contracting that greatly increases productivity and makes capturing travel spending seamless.

Its worldwide teams of experts is strategically located across the globe providing travelers in-location expertise. They are complemented by service center support staff, available to travelers 24/7.

An additional feature that makes HotelPlanner valuable — and a good fit for U.S. Communities — is its emergency response capabilities. It will secure housing, meeting rooms, flights, car and other ancillary services for public agency personnel traveling due to emergency-disaster or pre­paredness efforts in anticipation of an emergency or disaster.

HotelPlanner operates multi-regional Emergency Command Centers to ensure comprehensive coverage, with no interruptions in service, regardless of the disaster’s location. Emergency response teams work with each agency to determine a process that streamlines commu­nication, assures procurements are limited to authorized expenditures, and maximizes resources and reporting.

While this aspect of the com­pany’s service is not meant to replace emergency operations in place, it can provide comprehensive assistance in one aspect of emergency response — securing hotel rooms quickly and securely.

The contract was awarded through a competitive solicitation process conducted by lead public agency, Kansas City, Mo.

U.S. Communities is the leading national government purchasing cooperative, providing solutions and savings to members by aggregating the purchasing power of public agen­cies nationwide. U.S. Communities provides county users with access to a wide variety of competitively solicited contracts with national suppliers that have committed to providing their lowest overall public agency pricing. For more information, please visit www.uscommunities.org.