With corporate hotel rate negotiations wrapping up, the aggressive push for steep increases from hoteliers has left a sour taste in some buyers' mouths, although others said the outcome largely is in line with expectations.
"There's been a range of games out there in the hotel market," said Jean McClellan, an ICG Commerce sourcing associate whose primary focus is hotels. "Some of the prices increased right where we expected them to, and some of them seemed a little ridiculous."
Maria Chevalier, vice president of global business intelligence for BCD Travel's Advito consulting division, said rate increases have mostly remained within what was put forth in forecasts last year: a 6 percent increase in U.S. corporate negotiated hotel rates, with percentage increases in major gateway cities in the double digits
(BTN, Oct. 9, 2006).Teresa Solis, manager of meetings and executive travel services for Boise, Idaho-based Micron Technology, said her hotel program cost increased by about 7 percent this year, and the high-demand market continued to prove difficult.
"The problem that we see is availability, even with those hotels where you have with negotiated rates," Solis said. "Last-room availability is pretty much the standard with us, but it's still 50/50 whether you get the space."
Those increases correspond to general hotel industry rates. "Rates are up, with the latest data available, exactly 7 percent for 2006, over double the rate of inflation," said Jan Freitag, vice president of Hendersonville, Tenn.-based Smith Travel Research, a provider of lodging industry data. "The industry is certainly very healthy."
Former National Business Travel Association president Kevin Iwamoto said he'd been hearing more commonly of negotiated corporate rate increases of 9 percent to 10 percent. In general, there were few instances in which negotiations were impossible, he said.
"In some cases, you might not have a lot of choices," Iwamoto said, "but in most cases, you have some choices."
Buyers reported that hotels initially proposed increases well outside of that range. Kevin Maguire, director of global travel for Austin, Texas-based Applied Materials, said that he was asked to entertain rate increases of as much as 40 percent by some hotels. In talking with other travel managers, Maguire found that experience was not unique, and that the situation has raised buyer ire.
"Increases are acceptable when they're reasonable," Maguire said, "but this year, especially, there were more unreasonable presentations than reasonable ones."
Besides such obvious key cities as New York, ICG Commerce's McClellan said there also were a few surprises when it came to the hotel markets that presented the most challenging rates. Markets with a heavy oil industry presence, such as Calgary, saw steep increases in rates, she said.
Ironically, travel managers who have had the most success in past years were the ones who faced the harshest rate increase proposals in this year's negotiations, McClellan said. Hoteliers aimed to make up the difference for years of lower rates, she said.
"Those travel managers who have held costs for several years, while everyone else had been going up 8 percent, are the ones who were seeing stiff hikes," McClellan said. "Still, to be able to hold things steady for a couple of years speaks to how powerful some travel managers are."
The hotels were not always victorious. One travel manager of a Fortune 100 company said that through aggressive negotiations, he was able to hold his global hotel rates to an increase of less than 3 percent this year, while other companies with large programs were seeing the same increases as everyone else.
Priscilla Campbell, practice leader of hotel advisory services for American Express Business Travel, said several corporations with high enough volume and usage were able to keep rate increases below the forecast average. For such competitive markets as New York, that threshold was more than 1,000 room nights, she said.
"It varies wildly from city to city, so long as the hotels believe they are getting the anticipated share of business," Campbell said. "The corporations that had a good handle on their data, an understanding of their spending and strong policies and programs toward compliance were viewed most favorably."
Another surprise, according to Advito's Chevalier, was that there was not as big of a push on the hotelier side toward dynamic pricing, which many buyers already were poised to reject. "Based on what the hotels were saying, from a supplier perspective, I anticipated a little more response," she said.
American Express' Campbell said she saw most chains pushing for dynamic pricing, but most travel managers pushed back, so only a handful of clients entered into such agreements.
Leading up to negotiations, hoteliers repeated the theme that they, knowing that the market is cyclical, would value maintaining relationships with corporate clients in their proposals. Applied Materials' Maguire said some hotels might have damaged those relationships this round.
"To make up for missing profit levels from the last two or three years in one fell swoop is building up a lot of animosity from travel managers," he said. "I don't think it's good for the hotel industry. When times are bad, and hotels need bodies for rooms, corporations, just like elephants, will remember."
Advito's Chevalier said that some hotels valued those relationships more than others, but added that the majority of hoteliers seemed to take it into consideration, singling out Marriott and Hilton.
"It was a tough year for all of us," said Denise Lodridge-Kover, vice president of business travel sales and strategic partnership accounts for Hilton. "The customers were doing their due diligence. At the end of the day, we'll be able to receive a healthy increase that was fair to the customers and that kept the long-term in mind."
Some buyers still have not completed their negotiations. While Chevalier said improved technology and experience ease the request-for-proposals process every year, Lodridge-Kover said the tougher negotiating climate stretches it. "We are in the wrapping-up stages," she said. "They seem to start earlier every year and go on longer every year."
As electronic folio data becomes more readily available—InterContinental Hotels is the latest, beginning its offering this month
(BTN, Dec. 4, 2006)—travel managers have easier access to hotel data to use in negotiations, Chevalier said. By the time this year's negotiations roll around, the folio data will have even more of a central role, she said.
"Companies did certainly review more of the cost-of-stay analytics," Chevalier said. "E-folio is going to come into play more this year than ever before for all sides to better see what they're procuring."
Looking ahead, analysts said they expect supply to catch up to demand by next year. Smith Travel Research's Freitag said that he expected supply growth to increase about 1.6 percent compared with a moderate increase in demand growth, at or even below 1 percent.
Even with that shift, however, Applied Materials' Maguire doesn't expect negotiations to get any easier for buyers anytime soon.
"We'll see it only when there's another situation that drives down hotel rates significantly," Maguire said. "I don't expect hotels to back off."