One-On-One With Dorothy Dowling: Best Western Corp. Sales Soar

With escalating rates across the hotel industry, several midprice hoteliers are reporting increased interest from corporate travel buyers to replace some upscale rooms with midprice rooms. Dorothy Dowling, Best Western International's senior vice president of sales and marketing, spoke last week to Business Travel News hotel editor Michael B. Baker about that trend as well as Best Western's growth plans and recent amenity enhancements within the brand.

BTN: Has the seller's market affected Best Western's corporate sales?

Dorothy Dowling: We've had a dramatic year-over-year increase in terms of corporate marketshare. Our sales have gone up more than 30 percent for two consecutive years. The bottom line is a combination of renewed consideration from corporate procurement and the focused resource department within our Best Western sales organization that allows us to build solutions that matter to the corporate procurement folks, whether they're in a midsize or large-budget travel program. There is a definite increased consideration for midprice brands, and given our distribution, we can solve a lot of procurement managers' needs.

BTN: Have you increased the size of your corporate sales force?

Dowling: We haven't increased the number of salespeople who are based in the field. What we have done is focus them. We restructured our sales organization so our outside sales folks—the folks who sell North America—are focused on the bigger buyers, solving for their needs and providing a one-stop shop. We are supporting the midsize accounts because we built an internal sales organization for their needs. We're providing for them at the same level, but we're doing it on a phone-based support mechanism. Our research demonstrated that is really what those buyers wanted. The midsize accounts don't want a salesperson visiting with them frequently because they don't have the time. Travel procurement is just one piece of the things that they do every day.

BTN: Is rate the primary reason buyers choose Best Western?

Dowling: Saving money to me goes much beyond just the room rates as part of the value proposition. It really is the all-inclusiveness in terms of pricing at a Best Western versus some of the brands in upscale. In the midprice tier, with a product like Best Western, the same amenities exist as in the upscale brands. A couple of months ago, we hosted a meeting in Las Vegas that we couldn't host at a Best Western, because it was a large group. When I checked out five days later, my bill was more than $200, and that was not because of food charges. It was more than $200 because of incoming faxes at $6 a page, high-speed Internet at $15 a night and receiving packages that cost more to receive at the hotel than they did to ship through the courier company. With Best Western, when the rate is $89, $99 or $109, that's a completely inclusive price in that incoming faxes are free, and high-speed Internet is part of the rate, as are all the other amenities. In most cases, parking is also free, but there are a few exceptions to that, especially in big city locations like Manhattan. For people who are procuring travel, that is a factor of consideration. It's not just the rate. It's all the other incremental charges that hit their budget that's part of their consideration in terms of looking at midprice brands like Best Western.

BTN: Is free Internet a brand standard?

Dowling: The number-one thing that comes up when we work with both travel management companies and corporate procurement is high-speed Internet. It's just an absolutely essential amenity for corporate travelers today, so that's a standard across Best Western in every guest room in North America and is included in the pricing. The demand for high-speed Internet in hotels across Europe is about the same level as in North America today, and free high-speed Internet is not yet a standard there, but it's one of the future standards. High-speed Internet is available at all of our locations in Europe, and we're moving toward the same kind of all-inclusive pricing in Europe down the road.

BTN: Are other amenities sticking out in negotiations?

Dowling: When we work with both the corporate procurement officers and the travel management companies, we find that even when you become one of the preferred suppliers, if you don't have a rich and robust loyalty program, influencing those individuals over to the brand is almost impossible. We've done a lot of work on Gold Crown Club, our global loyalty program. A lot of it has been enhanced on the rewards and redemption. Over the last 12 to 18 months, we've made it so the points never expire. Our corporate road warriors wanted to know that their points are like a bank account, always available for them to redeem. We've also tiered our program a little bit differently, so at the elite levels, there are far richer rewards. The greatest value proposition around Gold Crown Club is the element of being able to redeem for those nights globally. No other brand has such an offer, in which members could earn points in North America and redeem them in Shanghai, Paris or anywhere around the world that they choose. Because of our distribution, that becomes a very meaningful opportunity. The second amenity is breakfast. In our limited service hotels, which are about 75 percent of the brand, it's a free breakfast. In our full-service properties, it's typically a breakfast available in the restaurant at a cost, obviously.

BTN: Are there any upcoming announcements to report of interest to corporate travel buyers?

Dowling: There are two areas of focus: One is on the pricing solution and rate integrity, and the second is around distribution services. We're really finding with a lot of our partners that they want to move to host-to-host connectivity, so we have three or four different solutions for them that allow varying levels of customization. All of those are already active, so it's really trying to fine-tune those and make them more meaningful. The other element, involving billing, we are launching this spring. We have central billing available for our corporate accounts, which is a very important offer to them particularly because it's global in scope. We also are launching a VCard product—it's similar to Ticketmaster, how they have security overlays—for corporate accounts that would like to be using that as opposed to different payment solutions.

BTN: Do meetings play a large role in domestic corporate sales?

Dowling: Of the 2,400 properties we have in North America, about 50 percent of them have meetings facilities. They do some corporate group business. The property in Seattle's city center, for example, does a lot of corporate group and has a fair amount of meeting space, but that's not the norm. Most of those 1,100 to 1,200 properties would have a couple of boardrooms and a class-size facility. They're doing small meetings for the most part. Most corporate growth that we spoke about is in transient business.

BTN: What are you seeing in terms of European sales?

Dowling: With our product in Europe, we have more corporate group product than we have in North America, so that's a big consideration. The major trend we're seeing with the TMCs is toward global deals. They really want to work with fewer brands and provide solutions on a global basis. We are working now with our partners in Europe and Asia to build out a lot of those solutions with travel management companies so they can have some uniformity in terms of use.

BTN: What growth strategy does Best Western have in place?

Dowling: In almost every country we serve, we have excellent distribution. We feel that we cover most of the destination areas extremely well. New construction is our primary mode in terms of properties that are coming into the Best Western system. We really evaluate what our buyers are telling us, and if we don't have sufficient rooms in that market area, we're putting that on our development teams' list.

BTN: Are there any key areas of focus for international growth?

Dowling: Certainly Asia. We've had unbelievable growth in China. In Shanghai last fall, we had five Best Westerns under construction. We're number one in China in terms of hotels actually open and operating and in those in the pipeline. In India, we've just done a master agreement. Our board of directors is going over at the end of May to meet with a lot of developers and government officials to get an accelerated growth plan for India. We also have major growth happening around the rest of Asia: Korea, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia. In all of the major Asian areas, we've got a lot of development underway, but we have pretty good distribution there, too. In any country you go to, Best Western has more locations in the destinations that travelers are looking to go to than any of our competitors.

BTN: What's the status of your efforts to standardize the brand?

Dowling: Best Westerns rarely look the same on the outside, but we do guarantee that business travelers, beyond the experience, are going to find the same level of service and amenities at every Best Western. We have standardization across all the amenity offerings in North America, including high-speed Internet, free incoming faxes, free local phone calls and our loyalty program.

BTN: How important are the major TMCs and global distribution systems play for corporate sales?

Dowling: Our affiliation and association with travel management companies is stronger than ever. We are solidly behind the partners and work closely with both our corporate accounts and the travel management companies to make sure we can align and provide the level of services that's needed, wanted and desired. With regards to the feeds associated through the different suppliers, the global distribution system is still the primary mechanism in terms of providing the transaction capabilities. From our perspective, the travel management companies and a lot of the corporate accounts are working through a lot of online booking tools and self-booking tools that are still using the GDS as a primary engine, so I don't see that that's going to change in the short term. We are finding that some of our medium-size accounts want to go direct on host-to-host connectivity solutions, but they're not typically working through a TMC.