Business travelers largely are satisfied with their company's hotel policy and hotel supplier partners, although the most popular amenities at hotels also are the largest sources of friction, according to a BCD Travel survey of 1,035 business travelers.
The survey—which was conducted in May and included travelers from North America, Europe and Asia/Pacific—showed 70 percent of travelers were extremely or somewhat satisfied with their company's hotel policy, and 69 percent were similarly satisfied with their company's hotel suppliers. For each, 19 percent of respondents said they were "mixed," and the remaining respondents, about one in 10, said they were extremely or somewhat dissatisfied with each.
Just over one-third of respondents said they face no challenges when booking a hotel for business travel. The most frequent problem in booking, cited by 27 percent of respondents, was that their employer had set a hotel rate limit insufficient for their trip. A user-unfriendly booking tool was next for 16 percent of respondents, and online booking tools were the predominant method of booking for travelers in the survey, with 84 percent saying they used one for hotels. Just under 20 percent said they booked directly from a hotel's website or app, as respondents were able to select more than one booking method.
Wi-Fi and breakfast were the most frequently used amenities in the survey, used by 88 percent and 80 percent of respondents, respectively. Slow Wi-Fi, however, was the leading source of frustration in the survey, with 51 percent of respondents saying it was a point of friction. That was followed by hotels not including breakfast in hotel rates, cited by 41 percent of respondents, and both dated rooms and uncomfortable beds, each cited by 40 percent of respondents.
Other frequently used hotel services included restaurants, cafés and bars, used by 61 percent of respondents—only 22 percent said they used room service by comparison—and early check-in and late check-out services, used by 47 percent of respondents.
The survey indicated that travelers prefer familiarity with hotels, with 77 percent saying they prefer chain hotels with standards of service that they know, and 73 percent said they repeatedly stay at the same hotel when they go to a destination multiple times. Only 10 percent indicated a preference for boutique hotels over chains.
In addition, the survey showed that sustainability currently is not often a driving factor for business travelers' accommodation decisions. While 35 percent said they sometimes take environmental considerations into account when booking accommodations, 49 percent said they rarely or never do, compared with 16 percent who said they often or always do. Nearly 40 percent of respondents said they don't look at any sustainability attributes when booking, while 23 percent looked at eco-certifications and 20 percent looked at emissions.
That low level is in part "because most booking tools lack strong sustainability guidance in [the hotel] category," April Bridgeman, BCD SVP of Hotel Solutions, said in a statement. "We advise clients to embed sustainability into their annual hotel sourcing exercise and then clearly communicate expectations and targets back to travelers to help them make better choices."