Ross Hosking
Wyndham Hotel Group executive vice president of global sales Ross Hosking recently spoke with Management.travelabout efforts to maintain existing corporate accounts and garner more such clients in a challenging economy. Hosking touched on corporate demand, revenue management and the company's portfolio of 7,000 properties in most segments across 66 countries.
What results are you expecting for 2010?
Our revenue per available room in the first part of this year has not bounced back yet, but we are seeing the leading indicators of demand being very positive. For example, we have more of our hotels included in [corporate] requests for proposals this year over last year. The other couple of leading indicators that would lead us to be optimistic about the year is that we have seen very good growth in small-business accounts for transient business, and small group leads are well over last year. These are very short term in nature and tend to be pretty regional, but the indicators are positive.
In which regions do you see the greatest corporate demand?
It is a little early for us to tell, but it seems that demand is growing quickest on the [U.S.] coasts and then working its way toward the middle part of the country. Internationally, China is a very strong market for us both in growth of hotels and in overall travel. We have also seen a bit of an uptick in Canada.
Has the down market lead to more creative thinking when it comes to retaining or attracting corporate business?
Our process with corporate accounts is to listen very carefully to what their needs are and then pattern a solution to them. One of the things that we have been working hard on is that our 11 brands go from Wyndham to Ramada to Super 8 and Days Inn, so we have been going to a lot of customers to get them to reduce their travel spend without having to reduce travel by including more of our brands in their programs. For our customers in 2009, we renegotiated so many contracts and it was a bit crazy. The customers were all about rate, but many of our brands include high-speed Internet, breakfast and a lot of the things customers are asking for. It is just another reason why we have had some success in showing the value of our brands. Rates varied by customer and where they needed to travel, but, by and large, customers were seeking multiple-year deals and flat rates. We would come back and work with them where we could but also include more of our hotels that could accommodate slightly lower rates where it fit for the customers. We continued renegotiation of rate as the economy went southward last year; some accounts renegotiated their rates several times during the year. However, from all indications from our customers this year, that is not a trend we are expecting to continue.
Are corporate customers more flexible toward dynamic pricing?
We haven't seen a lot of requests for dynamic pricing. For some customers, it works very well, but it's not a widespread trend that we have seen. Only a select number of our clients expressed an interest in a dynamic pricing model in the last year. We continue to work individually with each of our clients to find solutions that best work for them and their price point. One of the advantages of our company is that we have an extremely diverse portfolio with accommodations in nearly every segment of the industry. That, combined with broad global distribution, allows us significant flexibility to work with clients at any given price.
How does the sales team work with revenue management to ensure the rates are available?
The simple answer is that we work very closely with hotel revenue management on the corporate level so they are at the table as we are discussing strategies right from the get-go. As far as rates being able to be booked, many of our corporate customers ask or require last room availability with their negotiations and with last room availability, the rate is always available if the room is. But there are some customers who want the lowest rate that they can get and are willing to live with non-LRA, knowing full well that when the hotel is nearing full, a non-LRA account would not be able to book it. But for some customers that works very well. LRA needs to be a part of what the customer is really asking for. Being able to get LRA depends a lot on the volume they are bringing to a destination and the volume that they are willing to commit to a hotel.