Helping Darwin Escapes simplify ad-hoc purchasing

Darwin Escapes is a leading UK holiday park operator offering a portfolio of over 20 five-star holiday resorts across the UK. They provide a range of luxury accommodation catering to both holiday breaks and holiday home ownership. Their resorts are known for award-winning facilities, including spas, swimming pools, and golf courses, located in picturesque countryside and coastal settings.

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Focusing on excellent guest experiences, daily ad-hoc purchases are key to ensure smooth operations. However, the high volume of such purchases can quickly create a domino effect of inefficiencies. To address the resulting challenges, the organisation wanted an efficient system that would keep people accountable and foster better collaboration across multiple sites.

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Darwin Escapes confronted the typical dilemma of providing staff with the tools needed to fulfil daily responsibilities while remaining within budget and in alignment with business objectives. Maintaining a financially sound and compliant process requires regular receipt collection and reporting, as well as minimising wasteful processes.

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The scale of the ad-hoc procurement activities further demands additional levels of control: pre-purchase approvals and spend transparency, the overview of which should be readily available in one centralsystem.

During our initial implementation, we quickly realised that the AirPlus– Mazepay solution would absolutely fit Darwin Escapes requirements and help resolve their pains in reconciliation, control and automation. AirPlus–Mazepay offered thorough implementation to ensure smooth go-live and adoption of the system.
_{Chuk Cheung
Customer Success Manager, AirPlus International}

The AirPlus-Mazepay solution provides the necessary control and efficiency, optimising Darwin Escapes' purchasing process. Tailored approval flows ensure that all submitted purchase requests are pre-approved by the right managers. With a notification system and a user-friendly interface in place, employees upload their receipts on time directly onto the system. Missing or incorrect receipts are flagged, enabling faster and more efficient audits, all of which significantly improve the organisation's receipt collection and compliance.

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What is more, the finance team has access to all relevant request and transaction information in one spot, allowing for immediate action in an unbroken audit trail. Such data is available in a structured format and used for reporting and reconciliation.

Mazepay provided Darwin Escapes with a reliable purchasing infrastructure to issue AirPlus Virtual Cards, creating a smooth and efficient process for their ad-hoc online spending. The organisation has full control over their Mazepay account configuration and can manage it confidently.

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The ease-of-use and automated approval workflows resulted in employees quickly embracing Mazepay with minimal onboarding needed. They now purchase compliantly and provide all the needed receipts, taking full ownership of their purchases. The finance team benefits from this too - receipt audits are more efficient and allows them to act on missing or incorrect receipts quickly.

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The AirPlus-Mazepay solution has improved the way we manage ad-hoc purchases — our employees can buy what they need quickly and compliantly, while finance has full transparency and control over spending.
_{‍Claire Lloyd
Head of Finance, Darwin Escapes}

Mazepay continues to help companies like Darwin Escapes bring clarity to their long-tail purchasing processes, ensuring every purchase is pre-approved, tracked, and accounted for. By combining automation with powerful features, Mazepay makes managing long-tail purchases easier than ever.

We now have full visibility and control over our ad-hoc purchases. With automated approval flows and user friendly receipt collection, our team can focus on delivering the best guest experience without the hassle of manual processes.
_{‍Claire Lloyd
Head of Finance, Darwin Escapes}