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What do you do when 600 university students need transporting to alternative accommodation at 4am after a burst water tank floods a nine-storey residence in Leeds?
If you’re an Inntel client, you give us a call, and we take care of the rest.
In this case, that client was a leading UK student accommodation provider, managing homes for more than 65,000 students across 22 cities. With significant disruption unfolding overnight, they needed a partner who could mobilise immediately.
Inntel already had a long and successful history of managing this client’s corporate travel needs. When the client undertook a formal procurement process to appoint a specialist partner for student alternative accommodation and group travel during times of disruption, Inntel was selected as the preferred provider.
The client outlined very clearly in their procurement process that emergency incidents could take place at any time of day or night, with an immediate need for large scale hotel room numbers, transport and meal vouchers.
The Inntel Emergency Response Service (ERS) was selected as the best-fit solution. Our ERS met all the requirements, providing management and booking services for up to 1,000 students quickly and at any time of day or night.
Less than two weeks after implementation of the Emergency Assistance Service contract, the team was called into action.
At 4am, a water tank burst, flooding a nine-storey university residence. All rooms were damaged and our client’s City Manager had an urgent need to find alternative accommodation for 600 students.
Not an easy task, even in normal working hours, let alone at 4am. But Inntel’s Emergency Assistance Service team leapt into action. Within an hour of the initial call, taxis and coaches were arranged to transport affected residents to the hotel rooms Inntel had sourced. The Inntel EAS team continued managing the incident around the clock for five days and nights.
A total of 1,788 hotel rooms and serviced apartments, 62 taxis and 22 coaches operating hourly shuttles into Leeds and surrounding areas such as Doncaster and Bradford were arranged and managed by the Inntel team. Despite the scale and urgency, every displaced student was accommodated safely and swiftly.
The client’s City Manager, who coordinated the contract with Inntel, was delighted with how well the management of the emergency had been handled, noting the scale of the incident and the tight timeframes needed, commenting:
“Your work ethic, dedication and just plain stubbornness to get the job done have ensured hundreds of our customers have been taken care of and disruption has been kept to a minimum. Thank you.”
The client was also pleased that costs had been managed so effectively by Inntel and welcomed the management information data that was provided to her after the incident, enabling her to drill down into specific costs and data.