The hotel market is evolving rapidly, creating new challenges—and opportunities—for corporate travel buyers. Here are five expert tips for navigating the fluctuating room rates, new fees and dynamic pricing strategies that define today’s hotel marketplace.
- Analyze your hotel data to ensure you have the right balance between negotiated rates (for primary markets), fixed chain-wide discounts and dynamic pricing (for secondary markets). Dynamic pricing uses a year-round sourcing strategy that lets you break the cumbersome request for proposals cycle.
- Make sure your contract terms and conditions prevent hotels from imposing increasingly common cancellation and change fees.
- Keep on top of chains moving your preferred properties from one brand to another. It could lead to reduced services for the same price.
- Rates within individual hotels vary more than ever. Use rate audits and introduce a rate assurance programthat actively monitors and re-books rooms when rates fall after the original reservation.
- If you haven’t already included Airbnb-type alternative accommodations in your program and travel policy, now is the time. Alternative properties are a good option if a preferred hotel refuses to negotiate or grant last-room availability.
To learn more, read New Approaches to Hotel Sourcing, a new white paper from the Association of Corporate Travel Executives, underwritten by BCD Travel. Want to get ahead of fast-moving hotel trends? Check out Advito’s 2018 Industry Forecast infographic or download the full report.
