The average corporate negotiated hotel rate in the United States will increase between 5.5 percent and 6.5 percent, according to analysis released this week by NYU hospitality clinical professor Bjorn Hanson.
"This should be a year for corporations to pay more, and hotel executives are viewing 2015 as an opportunity to catch up," said Hanson, whose analysis is based on industry data and interviews with corporate travel and hospitality executives. "If you go back to 2007 and look at inflation, rates should be higher than they are now, and occupancy is up by two full points this year."
As in recent years, hoteliers and travel buyers are entering negotiations with vastly different expectations, Hanson said. Buyers are braced for increases but hope to hold them to 3.5 percent to 4.5 percent, he said. Some hotels, meanwhile, said they would push for increases as high as 8.5 percent.
Even so, Hanson said the gap in expectations this year was not as broad as it was in negotiations leading up to 2014 corporate rate agreements.
"I'm not suggesting it will be an easy year [for negotiations], but everyone understands there has been an increase in occupancy," he said. "It's been a couple of years since the end of the recession, and people are getting used to this environment."
Corporate negotiated hotel rates in the U.S. in 2014 increased about 4.5 percent, and overall U.S. hotel ADR increased about 4 percent, according to the analysis.
Hanson also noted that hotels will continue to push for services and amenities—Internet access and breakfast, for example—to be charged separately for room rates, a "trend that accelerated in 2012 and 2013," the analysis indicated. At the same time, buyers will be eyeing more select-service hotels to add in their programs in lieu of upper upscale, full-service hotels, Hanson said.