Buyers Plan For Small 2026 Hotel Rate Hikes, At Most

This year's macroeconomic uncertainty and softening business travel demand has affected the bottom lines of the major U.S. hotel companies, and most travel manager respondents to BTN's annual Hotel Survey expect to be able to limit corporate hotel rate increases in 2026.

BTN in July and August surveyed 232 travel managers and procurement executives about the state of their hotel programs and their expectations for the coming year. While 61 percent of those respondents indicated they expect their organization's 2026 corporate hotel rates to be higher than they are in 2025, only 24 percent of all respondents expect those increases to exceed 5 percent. 

About 39 percent of all respondents project negotiated rates to increase less than 5 percent year over year, with another 28 percent expecting them to hold steady. The remaining 14 percent forecast their rates to decline.

BTN in the survey offered respondents the opportunity to detail in their own words their goals for their hotel programs for 2026, and many indicated their plans to push to hold the line on their rates. A sampling:

"Focus on lower rates while still being in the locations we need to be."

"Keep rates flat year over year due to market weakness."

"Lower rates and better cancellation terms."

"Maintain 2025 rates, with minimal increases; remove amenities since most travelers fail to take advantage of these add-ons."

"Minimum rate increase, flat or less than 5 percent."

A Reasonable Goal?

Having a plan to hold rates steady Is quite different than achieving that outcome in a negotiation, of course, and while request-for-proposals season has a way to go before any assessment of buyer success can be made, there are some signs that they have a realistic shot at achieving their aims.

First, consider recent history: Buyers one year ago generally held their negotiated 2025 hotel rate increases to low single-digit percentages, and that was in a market that most would consider, despite some concern a year ago about softening leisure demand and some uncertainty surrounding the U.S. presidential election, to be a stronger market for hoteliers. 

Omni Hotels & Resorts chief commercial officer Jeff Doane in July told BTN that "I'm not sure we're back to stabilized occupancy altogether in the United States. I don't know that there's enough pressure for hotel companies to really try to drive rate." Some forecasters agree that persistent economic uncertainty has softened suppliers' negotiating ground.

Travel management company American Express Global Business Travel in August projected geopolitical instability and uncertainty around U.S. tariff policy generally would lead only to moderate at best 2026 rate growth throughout the world. The TMC projected 2026 increases for nine U.S. cities, with only Chicago higher than 4 percent year over year—and just slightly, at 4.2 percent.

"In the U.S., we expect price rises to be moderate, tempered by a projected downturn in inbound demand," Amex GBT said in its Hotel Monitor 2026 report. "Food and beverage costs, pushed up by tariffs on imported produce, could rise."

Some hotel forecasters too in recent months have lowered their projections for overall 2026 rates. Hotel analytics firm STR and Tourism Economics in August projected 2026 U.S. average daily rates would increase 1 percent year over year. (In June the companies projected 2026 U.S. ADR would increase 1.3 percent year over year.) Lodging Analytics Research & Consulting, meanwhile, projected U.S. ADR to increase 1.4 percent year over year in 2026.

A Dynamic Proposition

Several buyer respondents in the survey took the opportunity to weigh in on their willingness to accept dynamic rates—a set percentage off a hotel's best available published rate on a given day—instead of a flat, static annual rate.

Many hoteliers traditionally have favored dynamic pricing structures, which in many cases would allow them to charge corporate clients a higher rate in times of high demand, but aren't always successful in persuading buyers to go along, particularly outside of seller's markets. 

A sampling of open-ended comments from buyer respondents on open-ended pricing: 

"Maintain or reduce 2025 preferred rates in our key markets and keep most of our preferred rates static."

"Only static rates, no dynamic pricing. Shift market share to even out our spend amongst worthy suppliers."

"Rate reduction, not just limited increase. Also, dynamic pricing is problematic and would like to further limit or add criteria in our program."

"Dynamic rates have not been delivering the expected savings so, we're considering other alternatives."

"Moving to 90 percent-plus dynamic, shortening the RFP timeline."

That last respondent's enthusiasm for that level of dynamic pricing does not appear to be widely shared among peers, regardless of such structures' effect on the length of the request-for-proposals cycle. Only 7 percent of respondents to BTN's survey indicated their organizations "primarily" negotiate dynamic rates in their hotel programs, although an additional 64 percent include a mix of dynamic and fixed rates. 

While hoteliers in recent years have pushed with varying degrees of intensity and success for dynamic pricing agreements, with variances by hotel company and geography, it seems clear that there is no widespread effort to ditch fixed rates. 

Cvent VP of product management Brian Sullivan earlier this year told BTN that of the RFPs for the 2025 corporate hotel programs that were submitted through Cvent's platform, 85 percent of accepted negotiated rates were fixed, slightly down from 2024 levels.

"We've actually seen that level off," Sullivan said. "That's actually down from 86 percent last year, but it's up a couple percent from two years ago, so it's basically staying roughly the same. … You hear a lot in the industry about how suppliers are pushing hard for dynamic rates. They've got a bit of leverage, but buyers are clearly—in our tool anyway—resisting that in many instances and we're seeing a lot of negotiations culminate in fixed rates."

With hoteliers seemingly on shakier negotiating ground for 2026, it seems unlikely that hoteliers could drive a significantly higher share of agreements to dynamic pricing. 

On the other hand, the turbulence of 2025 perhaps makes 2026 more of a wild card than many might expect. Several U.S. airline executives in recent weeks have suggested that U.S. business travel demand in the latter half of the third quarter has bounced back from the lows of the spring and early summer, and Marriott president and CEO Anthony Capuano said he's seen "a tiny bit of an uptick" in business travel.

Perhaps 2025 has one last surprise after all.