Large market buyers, even without the volume advantages of the largest travel buyers, are keeping hotel rates under control by boosting compliance, compiling data to benchmark their performance by city, following such best practices as vendor consolidation and enacting tiering down strategies.
Download a PDF of the full 2009 Large Market Benchmarking Report here, including all data, charts, stories and large market buyer profiles.While large market buyers generally paid higher luxury and upscale hotel rates, there was very little difference in the overall average daily rate they paid last year compared with Corporate Travel 100 companies.
BTN's survey showed the overall average large market rate in 2008 was $156.50, compared with a CT100 average rate of $155.30.
"This group is paying attention to strategies like compliance monitoring and getting a hold of the whole hotel spend," said Neysa Silver, Carlson Wagonlit Travel Solutions Group Americas director of hotel consulting. "Their rates might not be as good as someone who puts in twice the volume, but savings are just as important."
Large market buyers reported domestic hotel compliance levels mostly within the 50 percent to 69 percent range. Hotel compliance is trickier than other travel components because of the sheer volume of hotel supply, location issues that might not make a preferred property the best choice for some travel and legitimate reasons to book outside of preferred properties, such as traveling to an area that has no preferred properties or attending an industry event where a non-preferred property has a negotiated group rate, said Bob Brindley, BCD Travel consulting unit Advito's vice president of business development. Silver said buyers get a better picture of compliance by reporting only from preferred locations and by incorporating reason codes when possible.
Justin Zucker, manager of travel services for education and media conglomerate Pearson, said during an educational session at the National Business Travel Association's annual convention in August that his company's executives are not interested in compliance directly. Their priorities are budgets and traveler safety, he said.
Zucker said he monitors the percentage of bookings that go to preferred hotels compared with other properties, but he uses actual rates paid to communicate value to senior management, he said.
"Does John Q. Traveler, who is going to whatever city, get the same rates?" Zucker said. "It actually is telling me if our program has a lot of value."
Laurie Kazimer, manager of travel sourcing at Target Corp., said at the same NBTA session that her company keeps hotel compliance and cost in check by setting expense limits in key cities. With daily reporting from its travel management company, Target is able to ferret out hotel bookings that are either outside of preferred properties or are above those expense limits. Travelers are notified, and senior management receives reports about those who do not follow the recommendations, she said.
"It is pretty impactful when you know you're going to end up on a senior management report," Kazimer said. "It's been very successful over time."
Advito's Brindley said large market buyers employ rate caps for a variety of purposes, including targets for negotiations or setting guidelines for travelers who book outside of preferred properties. CWT's Silver said she's hearing more buyers ask about rate caps, although not many are using them yet, and that many instead have put an across-the-board limit on acceptable hotel rates.
Large market buyers also often have the volume to employ some of the negotiating strategies used by the largest travel buyers. Many, for example, have the volume to negotiate chainwide discounts, Brindley said, giving them coverage even in areas where they might not have a negotiated property. "If you can qualify for that, you'll also have a better service level because you'll have the benefit of these global chain representatives," he said.
Christa Manning, research director for American Express Business Travel Global Advisory Services, said this year large market buyers also are seeing rate decreases of 10 percent or more, compared with first offers, by using reverse auctions. It's one sign of the high negotiability levels of hotels, she said.
"We've also seen a better response rate and more unsolicited participation," Manning said. "That's why hotels have huge savings potential for large market companies right now."
While these strategies have more relevance in buyer's markets, Advito's Brindley said large market buyers also enjoy a certain advantage in seller's markets. When occupancy levels are high, hotels aren't necessarily interested in wooing the highest-volume corporate clients to their properties, he said.
"Sometimes you can be too big," Brindley said. "In a seller's market, size can be a disadvantage, if you ask a hotel for a thousand rooms and it doesn't need a thousand rooms. In the current market, size can be an advantage."
Large market buyers can increase negotiating leverage in a buyer's market by cutting the number of hotels in their program. "In the past, they might have needed five to 10 hotels in a city, not because of market or location needs, but because it was harder to get a room," he said. "Now, with occupancy down, they can streamline to three or four hotels and deliver a bigger share of their business."
A slight majority of large market buyers, 53 percent, reported they were using more lower-tier hotels in 2009 compared with 2008. While tiering down is an obvious strategy to achieve cost savings in a seller's market-particularly since midprice and select-service properties provide more amenities on a rate-inclusive basis-it is a more complicated choice in a buyer's market, according to consultants.
Lower-tier properties have less room in their rates to discount, Brindley said, while upper upscale and luxury properties can cut rates considerably in times of low occupancy. As a result, the premium between the tiers has decreased, so tiering down does not have the same savings impact as other policy alterations, such as cutting first- and business-class air travel.
"Some of our clients, even though they've made an effort to tier down, realized the travelers are going through a lot of stresses as well," he said. "If they can get an upper upscale property for just a few dollars more than an upscale property, they're going to let them do that."
CWT's Silver, however, said she has not seen buyers back away from tiering down strategies even as rates softened.
"Part of it is perception, because they don't think it's the right message to stay at all those luxury properties," she said. "Also, there still tends to be a delta, even if it's smaller than a year or two ago."
American Express' Manning said her group has done research to show significant savings to be achieved through tiering down. Travel buyers, in preparing their 2010 hotel programs, are taking a strong look at their market-tier strategy and are considering changing their constituent pool, she said.
"Companies are looking at their travel footprint and supplier mix and are going to be more precise in how they channel volume," Manning said. "They want to be in line with their peers to be cost competitive."
Still, Advito's Brindley said many times companies add lower-tier properties to their hotel programs, but travelers still stick to their same patterns with hotels. Their conscience might persuade them to book at lower-tier properties in times of heavy company cost cuts, but that would decrease as the economy rebounds, he said.
"As the economy improves and continues to improve as we go through 2010, I would expect some of that voluntary downgrading to start shifting back," Brindley said.