About Premium Hotel Group
the hotel group is one of Australia's largest hotel operators, managing a portfolio of properties across the Adina, Vibe, Travelodge, Rendezvous, and Collection by TFE brands. With hotels across Australia, New Zealand, and Europe, TFE serves both leisure and corporate travellers through a multi-brand portfolio spanning boutique apart-hotels, full-service city hotels, and select-service properties. The company's scale and brand diversity position it as a credible accommodation partner for large corporate travel programmes requiring consistent standards across multiple destinations.
The Australian corporate travel market is a structurally attractive revenue segment for hotel operators — long-stay bookings, predictable volume, direct rate agreements, and the absence of OTA commission structures make corporate accounts materially more profitable than equivalent leisure revenue. Corporate travel relationships are controlled by a concentrated decision-making group: travel managers at large companies, executive PAs managing senior leadership accommodation requirements, and procurement teams responsible for formalising corporate rate agreements. This audience is difficult to reach through advertising and responds almost exclusively to direct, credible relationship outreach.
TFE's corporate and group revenue was overwhelmingly dependent on OTA bookings and passive inbound from existing accounts. Seasonal demand volatility and OTA commission structures were compressing margins, while competitors — including Marriott Bonvoy, IHG, and Accor — were actively investing in direct corporate relationship programmes. TFE needed a proactive outbound corporate sales function that could build direct relationships with ASX-listed travel buyers before those buyers formalised agreements with competitor hotel groups.
Executive Summary
LVRA's corporate outbound programme delivered 68 qualified corporate conversations with travel managers and executive PAs at ASX-listed companies, converting 14 new corporate accounts with no prior TFE relationship and generating $2.4 million in identified corporate group booking pipeline. LinkedIn acceptance rates from corporate travel managers reached 38%, and the meeting-to-formal-introduction conversion rate was 33% — establishing the commercial case for a permanent dedicated corporate sales function.
What needed
to change.
TFE's corporate and group revenue was entirely inbound — driven by OTAs and existing accounts. No proactive outbound existed to engage new corporate clients directly.
Seasonal demand fluctuations and OTA commission structures were squeezing margins. The business needed direct corporate relationships that weren't controlled by third-party platforms.
Without a dedicated corporate sales function, TFE was leaving significant group and long-stay corporate revenue on the table while competitors built direct account relationships.
How we built the solution.
Every LVRA engagement runs through four structured phases — each one feeding the next.
Discovery & Audit
Phase 01
LVRA conducted a full audit of TFE's existing corporate revenue sources, mapping the proportion of corporate bookings arriving through OTAs versus direct channels, the geographic distribution of corporate demand across TFE's property portfolio, and the existing corporate account relationships managed by property-level teams. The audit confirmed that no centralised outbound corporate sales capability existed and that individual properties' capacity to conduct structured prospecting was being crowded out by day-to-day operational demands.
The ICP exercise defined the three primary corporate buyer personas for TFE's outbound programme: corporate travel managers responsible for setting preferred accommodation panels and negotiating rate agreements, executive PAs managing C-suite and senior leadership accommodation with high frequency and specific quality requirements, and procurement managers at large ASX-listed companies responsible for formalising corporate supplier agreements. Each persona required a distinct channel approach and messaging framework.
A review of TFE's existing sales collateral, corporate rate documentation, and brand positioning identified the proof assets available for use in outreach — including key property capabilities such as apart-hotel long-stay facilities, meeting and event infrastructure, group booking rate structures, and loyalty programme integration. The audit also identified the geographic concentration of TFE's highest-capacity properties relative to ASX-listed company headquarters most likely to generate significant corporate accommodation demand.
Market Intelligence
Phase 02
LVRA mapped 840 corporate travel managers, executive PAs, and procurement contacts across ASX-listed companies in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane — prioritised by company size, sector, employee headcount, and estimated corporate travel spend derived from publicly available financial disclosures and industry sector benchmarks. The mapping focused specifically on companies with multi-city operations that would benefit from TFE's multi-brand, multi-city portfolio rather than a single-property hotel relationship.
Competitor intelligence assessed the corporate outreach and rate agreement strategies of Marriott Bonvoy, IHG Business Rewards, and Accor's corporate sales programme — identifying the value proposition elements being offered to corporate travel buyers and the gaps in competitor positioning that TFE's apart-hotel and long-stay capability could credibly fill. The Adina apart-hotel product emerged as TFE's strongest differentiator against full-service hotel competitors for long-stay and project-team accommodation requirements.
Research into the corporate travel buyer decision cycle revealed that preferred hotel panel reviews typically occurred on an annual basis, with the evaluation period falling between August and November for companies on a calendar financial year. This seasonal intelligence shaped the outreach launch timing and the urgency framing used in the cold email sequences directed at procurement and travel manager contacts most likely to be mid-panel review at programme launch.
Strategy Design
Phase 03
The outreach architecture was designed as a dual-channel programme — LinkedIn for corporate travel managers and executive PAs, cold email for procurement contacts and travel managers at companies where LinkedIn penetration among that role type was lower. Each channel carried distinct messaging built around the specific decision criteria of the target audience, with LinkedIn sequences using TFE's visual brand assets and property references, and cold email sequences using peer social proof and a low-commitment introductory offer structure.
A corporate rate introduction offer was designed as the meeting conversion mechanism — positioning the initial conversation as a rate structure presentation and site visit opportunity rather than a sales call. This framing reduced the perceived commitment threshold for travel managers and executive PAs, who are conditioned to evaluate hotel partners through property visits and rate comparison rather than abstract sales conversations.
The appointment setting process was designed to qualify corporate contacts for minimum revenue potential before advancing them to a confirmed meeting — ensuring that TFE's commercial team was not investing relationship-building time in companies with corporate travel volumes too low to justify a formal rate agreement. A revenue potential scoring model was developed based on employee headcount, multi-city presence, and sector travel intensity benchmarks.
Launch & Optimise
Phase 04
The programme launched with an initial outreach cohort targeting 340 corporate travel managers and executive PAs across Sydney and Melbourne ASX-listed companies. LinkedIn acceptance rates from corporate travel managers averaged 38% in the first six weeks — significantly above benchmark for the hospitality sector — with positive reply rates from cold email to procurement contacts reaching 22% in the first outreach wave. All positive replies were managed by LVRA's appointment setting team and qualified against the revenue potential scoring criteria before meeting confirmation.
Outreach to executive PAs required a specific iteration of the messaging framework following the first four weeks of programme data. Initial sequences produced below-average reply rates from this audience, prompting a message redesign that introduced peer social proof references to comparable corporate accounts — a technique that had identified social proof as the dominant trust signal for executive PA decision-making in vendor selection contexts.
By the close of the programme period, 68 qualified corporate conversations had been delivered, 14 new corporate accounts secured, and $2.4 million in group booking and long-stay corporate pipeline identified and tracked. The 33% meeting-to-formal-introduction conversion rate confirmed the quality of the qualified meeting output, and TFE's commercial leadership initiated a review of options for building a permanent internal corporate sales function based on the outbound model and playbook developed by LVRA.
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How it was built, channel by channel.
Corporate Buyer Database Build & Prioritisation
LVRA built an 840-contact corporate buyer database covering travel managers, executive PAs, and procurement contacts at ASX-listed companies across Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. Each company record was prioritised using a revenue potential score derived from employee headcount, geographic office footprint, sector travel intensity, and publicly available financial disclosure data indicating corporate travel budget scale. Companies with multi-city operations and project-intensive workforces were ranked highest for outreach sequencing priority.
Contact-level research verified the identity and role of the specific travel manager, executive PA, or procurement contact at each company, with LinkedIn profile and company directory cross-referencing used to ensure outreach reached the individual with actual accommodation decision-making authority. Dual contacts were identified at 23% of target companies — allowing separate outreach sequences to be run to the travel manager and the executive PA at the same organisation without message overlap.
LinkedIn Outreach to Travel Managers & Executive PAs
LinkedIn outreach was structured as a three-step connection and message sequence, with the connection request leading with TFE's multi-city portfolio relevance to the target company's known geographic footprint. Post-connection messaging introduced TFE's apart-hotel long-stay product as a specific differentiator for project team and senior leadership accommodation, with a second message referencing a comparable corporate account in the same sector as social proof before the meeting request was made.
Executive PA outreach required a dedicated message variant following early programme data that showed this audience responding poorly to hotel partnership framing. The redesigned sequence led with the accommodation needs of specific senior leadership travel patterns — positioning TFE as the solution to a logistical challenge the executive PA faced regularly rather than as a vendor seeking a commercial relationship. This reframe produced a material improvement in reply rates from the executive PA cohort.
Cold Email to Procurement & Travel Policy Contacts
Cold email sequences targeting procurement managers and travel policy contacts used a peer-referencing approach, naming comparable ASX-listed companies in the same sector as existing TFE corporate rate clients to establish social proof in the opening line. The sequence was built on a five-touchpoint, 21-day cadence, with email three introducing a time-bound rate review offer timed to align with the corporate travel panel review cycles identified in the market intelligence phase.
Reply handling was managed by LVRA's appointment setting team with a four-hour response SLA for all positive replies. All contacts who expressed interest in a rate presentation or property visit were qualified against the revenue potential scoring model before a confirmed meeting was scheduled — ensuring that TFE's commercial team was presented only with corporate accounts meeting the minimum volume threshold for a formal rate agreement consideration.
Meeting Qualification & Commercial Team Handoff
Each confirmed corporate meeting was delivered to TFE's commercial team with a structured briefing document covering the company profile, the contact's role and seniority, the outreach sequence history, and the specific accommodation interest signals that had driven meeting acceptance. This briefing protocol ensured TFE's commercial team could conduct first meetings with informed context about the prospective account's likely travel volume and accommodation requirements.
A 33% meeting-to-formal-introduction conversion rate was tracked across the programme, with TFE's commercial team progressing 22 of the 68 qualified conversations to a formal rate presentation and property visit. Pipeline opportunity value was tracked across all 22 active accounts, with group booking and long-stay corporate estimates documented per account to produce the $2.4 million pipeline figure reported to TFE's leadership team at programme close.
3 pillars. One integrated system.
Each strategic pillar was designed to feed the next — creating compounding returns across every channel activated.
The numbers
that matter.
Every metric comes from verified campaign data — attributable to specific strategic decisions made during this engagement. No projections. No vanity numbers.
What this engagement taught us.
These principles carry forward into every engagement that follows — applicable well beyond Premium Hotel Group's specific context.
Industry
Hospitality
Market
Australia
Duration
Ongoing engagement
Executive PAs respond to social proof from peer companies.
Generic outreach to executive PAs is ignored. Referencing comparable corporate accounts — 'we work with the corporate travel teams at X and Y' — creates the social proof that breaks through the noise in this notoriously difficult audience.
Hotel outbound requires seasonal timing to match corporate planning cycles.
Corporate travel agreements and block bookings are planned on specific quarterly cycles. Outreach timed to these windows converts significantly better than evergreen campaign activity.
Group and corporate outbound requires a dedicated SDR — property staff cannot do both.
Front-of-house and property management teams are not equipped for structured prospecting. A dedicated corporate outbound function, separate from property operations, is the only model that produces consistent pipeline.
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