A plain English playbook for turning the companies already staying at your hotel into signed local accounts.
Every company on the Sales Intelligence screen is already sending guests to your hotel, but they are booking on a generic brand rate (a rate IHG hands to any member company) with no deal of their own with you. In other words: real, repeat business that you do not control and could lose to the hotel down the street at any time. The list is built automatically from your nightly audit, so there is no spreadsheet to keep and no data to enter.
Go to Sales Intelligence and choose your property from the dropdown at the top. The four boxes across the top give you the lay of the land at a glance: how many companies are worth chasing, how many room nights are in play, and how that splits between the two account types below.
The companies are ordered by how much business they bring you, biggest first. The one at the top is your largest unprotected account, so start there and work down. Each card shows the company name, how many room nights they have produced, and the revenue that goes with it.
Every company carries one of two badges, and the badge decides how you go after it.
Business Edge means you can win this one yourself by offering the company a local rate. Corporate Gold means the rate is set higher up at IHG, so you build the case and route it through your IHG contact.
The full difference is in the table further down.
Press Find contacts on a card and the app pulls back named people at that company with their titles and email addresses, so you are not cold guessing who to call. Use Find contacts for all at the top to do every company at once and build your full call sheet in one click.
The contact finder is fast but not perfect. Once in a while it returns the wrong person or someone at a similarly named company in another country. Glance at the name, title, and email address and make sure they fit a real decision maker at the local business. If it looks off, skip it and use another name on the card.
Press Work this account to start tracking the company. Then press Draft intro email and the app opens a ready to send email addressed to your contact, already worded for the right play (a local rate pitch for Business Edge, or a business case note for Corporate Gold). Read it, adjust the personal touches, and send.
Once you have opened an account it shows up on the Prospects board. Drag it forward as the conversation moves, from first contact all the way to a signed rate or a polite no. The board is your weekly to do list: anything sitting too long in one column is your follow up for the day.
Each card can show the actual guests from that company who have stayed with you recently. Naming a real traveler or a repeat visit in your outreach proves you already serve them well and turns a cold pitch into an easy yes. This list fills in from your nightly audit, so it grows as guests come through.
| Business Edge | Corporate Gold | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A generic IHG rate the company uses with no deal of their own at your hotel. | A rate set at the IHG corporate level for a large national account. |
| Who you contact | The decision maker at the local company (office manager, procurement, travel booker) from the contact list. | Your IHG Key Account Director, with the local numbers in hand to back you up. |
| The pitch | Offer a local negotiated rate so they book directly with you and you keep the business. | Build a property level business case showing how much this company already stays with you, and ask IHG to recognize it. |
| Why it works | You control the rate, so you can act today. | The corporate rate is the floor, not the ceiling. Real local volume is your leverage to do better. |