Case studies
Where the savings came from.
Three companies, three different problems with hotel spend. In each case the work started the same way — knowing what a fair rate looked like, and then negotiating it directly.
1,600+
Hotels with direct relationships
22%
Average rate reduction
$65
Saved per room-night
Engagement 01
Enterprise software · 1,200 employees · 12 markets
A third of their room-nights were booked above their own negotiated rate.
19%
Lower average room-night cost
$412k
Annualised savings
96%
Nights booked at or below benchmark
The challenge
A rate agreement signed three years earlier, before the company had doubled in size, had never been checked against what travelers actually paid. Roughly a third of room-nights in their largest markets — San Francisco, Austin and New York — cleared well above the rate finance believed it was getting.
What Zodiac did
- Benchmarked 12 markets against 18 months of their own booking data, market by market rather than as one blended average.
- Re-opened negotiations directly with the 46 hotels where the gap was widest, using committed volume from the company's own travel history.
- Set rate ceilings in six markets so out-of-policy bookings stopped quietly costing the difference.
We had a rate agreement. What we didn't have was anyone checking it. Zodiac found the gap inside the first fortnight.
Engagement 02
Professional services · 480 employees · 3 markets
Too small to negotiate, too big to keep overpaying.
24%
Lower average room rate
$187k
Saved in year one
28
Properties under direct agreement
The challenge
Three cities carried almost all of their spend, and their volume was real — but it was scattered across teams and bookings, so no major chain would treat them as a priority account. They took the published corporate rate and absorbed the difference on everything else.
What Zodiac did
- Rolled their three markets into Zodiac's existing portfolio volume so their spend negotiated at scale instead of alone.
- Secured direct agreements at 28 properties, with corporate codes their team could book the same day.
- Replaced the published rate with an agreed ceiling at every property on their shortlist.
Zodiac gave a 480-person firm the leverage of a 5,000-person one.
Engagement 03
Industrial manufacturing · 2,300 employees · 60+ markets
Five million dollars of spend, spread across towns nobody benchmarks.
14%
Rate reduction across the portfolio
$714k
Annualised savings
120+
Properties under agreement
The challenge
Their travel was not in gateway cities. It was in the secondary and tertiary markets around plants, suppliers and site visits, where nobody had ever told them what a fair rate looked like. Spend was reviewed at invoice level and never compared to anything.
What Zodiac did
- Built a benchmark for 60+ secondary markets, starting from their own booking history rather than a published index.
- Negotiated directly with more than 120 properties across those markets, including independents the large chains never reach.
- Ran quarterly rate audits so drift was caught within a quarter instead of never.
Nobody had ever shown us the going rate in these towns. Once we had the number, the conversation with the hotels changed completely.
Your spend is worth a second opinion.
Share your hotel spend and we'll show you where the same rooms cost less. No platform to adopt, no change to how your team books.