At Marco, we’ve been reflecting on our mission for several months.
Outside of salaries, two of the largest expenses for companies are travel and rent.
As companies spend less on rent, they’re spending more on travel, particularly group travel.
We pay for rent to bring employees together for better collaboration.
The same principle applies to group travel: companies host onsites, offsites, and retreats to bring their teams together.
In an increasingly distributed world, bringing teams together for collaboration and connection is more important than ever.
Proven Results
Here are a couple of examples of the savings we’ve been able to generate in a recent retreat:
- Series B AdTech Company:
- 66 person offsite
- $95K saved
- 30% saved overall
- 70+ hours saved for Chief People Officer, People Operations Manager, and EA
- 750 Employee Private Company:
- 45 person offsite
- $41K saved
- 25% saved overall
- 50+ hours saved for People Operations Manager, and EA
Philosophy and Inspiration
I’ve always admired the company Ramp,
Led by co-founders Eric Glyman and Karim Atiyeh, it’s one of the fastest-growing and best-run startups in history. Ramp is a modern fintech company with products ranging from corporate cards to expense management and procurement.
One of the reasons they’ve grown so quickly is their simple mission: to save their customers time and money
This mission influences every business decision Ramp makes and every product they build. It has enabled them to launch new products, all focusing on this core mission of helping their customers.
Group travel can be expensive.
Group travel is often seen as a cost center rather than an investment in building trust, alignment, and better businesses.
However, plenty of data shows that investing in group travel improves employee connection and, consequently, business results.
Atlassian reported in their "1,000 Days Distributed" report that employee connection improved by 27% after gatherings and stayed elevated for over four months.
When companies invest in group travel, they should ensure they’re maximizing that investment.
Our mission at Marco is to partner with companies to save them as much time and money as possible.
Over the past few months, we’ve developed products and processes to measure these savings.
We’ve launched our new free-to-use Property-Only option to help you discover and book the best properties for groups, alongside our Full-Service offsite offering.
We’re also building a suite of product features and business relationships with hotel partners to ensure we fulfill our mission of saving our customers time and money.
How do we save companies time and money?
We often don’t explain well enough how we save our customers time and money. Let’s break it down.
Money
- Buying power of a group travel company
- Many of our customers book group trips only a few times a year, and it’s not their core capability to book hotels.
- Even experienced event planners can’t get the rates a corporate group travel company can.
- At Marco, we book offsites for hundreds of customers, so hotels give us better rates.
- We nerd out on hotel rates, contracts, and savings. As an IATA-accredited travel partner, we focus on group travel for companies.
- We nerd out on hotel rates, contracts, and savings that we can generate. We’re an IATA-accredited travel partner that focuses on booking group travel for companies
- Given the volume of business we bring to hotels from high-quality, vetted companies, they offer us their most competitive rates.
- Rest assured, booking with Marco will get you the best rates
- Preferred partner program
- We didn’t want to just believe that hotels give us the best rates; we wanted to guarantee it. So, we launched our Preferred Partner Program.
- Through this program, we vet the highest quality hotels for groups worldwide and negotiate exclusive rates, concessions, and exclusions to ensure our customers get the best rates at the best hotels.
- We partner with amazing hotel groups like The Graduate and Pacific Hospitality Group, and many independent hotels to lock in the best rates for our customers.
- One source for RFPs to compare across options
- Instead of emailing 10+ hotels and sifting through contracts, we have RFP management technology that streamlines sending and receiving requests.
- You then work with our team to choose the most competitive offer for a property.
- Our pricing
- Our property-only offering is free to start, and we guarantee that our service fee will never exceed savings. On average, we save customers 31% on group hotel bookings.
- For our full-service offering, we guarantee savings that exceed our service fee for large groups.
- We manage your full budget
- For our full-service offering, we act as your sole vendor and partner.
- Our event operations and finance team works with you to manage complex budgets, ensuring you maximize savings and track spending accurately.
Time
- Time is money
- On average, large offsites take 80+ hours to plan and require multiple people.
- Choosing a property can take weeks: researching destinations, picking properties, requesting quotes, waiting for responses, and negotiating contracts.
- We simplify this process, allowing you to easily discover properties, request quotes, and book through our platform.
- After selecting a property, you have to manage multiple vendors, from food and beverage to team events and transportation. Marco manages all vendors for you, saving time and reducing stress.
- Marco Itinerary Builder
- Marco is a technology company. Besides providing exceptional service, we build product features specifically for group travel, including itinerary templates, customization options, vendor selection, and more.
Quick Takeaways
- Mission Alignment: Like Ramp, Marco’s mission is to save companies time and money.
- Group Travel Expertise: We leverage our buying power and preferred partner program to secure the best rates for our customers.
- Streamlined Process: Our RFP management technology and full-service offerings simplify planning and save you significant time.
- Proven Results: We've helped companies save substantial amounts of money and hours of effort on their offsites.
