Business travel is booming again – and so are prices. Average daily hotel rates in Europe have moved six per cent ahead of pre-Covid levels, according to lodging data company STR. Further hikes can be expected imminently as demand strengthens: STR forecasts that room occupancy on weekdays (the days that matter to business travellers) will return to pre-pandemic levels by the end of June.
It is precisely as hotels fill and prices rise that travel buyers’ negotiated rates with preferred properties come into their own. “During Covid, the savings provided by static corporate rates were a lot less because best available rates were better than the discounts that had been negotiated in 2019 and were continuing to be rolled over,” says Steve Reynolds, CEO and founder of hotel rate reshopping and auditing technology provider Tripbam. “Now we are starting to see these discounted rates provide value.”
Yet the rates buyers negotiate can only provide value if they are available when travellers attempt to book them. After her last hotel request for proposal (RFP) cycle, Willis Towers Watson category manager Clare Francis commissioned an audit six weeks later and discovered that 36 per cent of the rates she had negotiated had not been loaded into the global distribution systems used by travel management companies and corporate booking tools. Astonishing as it may seem, that’s a pretty normal figure.
Failure to load rates is by no means the only problem. Hotels may not switch on discounted rates when they get busy, even if the client agreement guarantees last room availability – a guarantee for which the buyer usually pays a premium. Tripbam’s analysis of the millions of rates which pass through its database suggests travellers only have access to rooms at LRA-negotiated fixed rates 74 per cent of the time.
Top performers
Five hotels in London which most consistently have contracted discounts
available at point of booking:
• Leonardo London Tower Bridge
• The…