Current analysis by Acendas Travel through our RateWatch tool, reveals corporations can benefit from the existing market environment to increase pricing leverage. As company executives continue to emphasize managing lodging costs, there are several important opportunities for hotel savings including the following:
- Offering access to strong hotel content via corporate booking choices.
- Controlling hotel spend dynamically and ongoing through the year, not just at negotiations.
- Rebooking hotel rooms when rates decrease.
Acendas’ Corporate Hotel program is designed to provide our clients with quality hotel programs and explore all opportunities to achieve savings, duty of care, and high-functioning program management. We measure the success of the program through the attachment rate, which is a ratio of hotel nights booked compared to the number of air travel nights. A low attachment rate is a result of hotel rooms booked outside the travel program.
Acendas’ RateWatch revolutionizes hotel savings via rebooking by analyzing rates daily through the check-out day. The tool uses improved automation to search for reduced room rates at the traveler’s booked hotel once the initial booking occurs. Acendas’ solution is to give travelers the confidence they’re getting the lowest hotel rate and provide additional savings to its clients. We estimate that lower hotel rates are identified 10 percent of the time. In addition, the Hotel Check-In function includes a notification process to ensure that your travelers are reminded to reserve a hotel room, when a reason for not selecting one isn’t provided at the time of booking.
“The recent hotel pricing conditions offers a significant chance for savings, particularly with companies that will innovatively pursue lower rates,” said Joe Curtis, Vice President, Sales & Client Strategies at Acendas Travel. “Having the ability to rebook hotel rooms at rates, which are reduced, is a crucial element. We’re observing an increased amount of client success stories that are utilizing our RateWatch tool.
Recently, Advito provided the following statistics to help corporations gain insight and control in their hotel program management:
- With 50 percent of hotel bookings being made outside corporate travel programs, travel managers are unable to locate travelers in these locations and cannot maintain duty of care. Acendas Travel’s Mission Control is our crisis management process to proactively track and assist clients during events that impact traveler safety.
- Only 29 percent of travelers reserve a hotel at the same time as air, which causes more out-of-policy bookings. If an Acendas traveler makes an air reservation without booking a hotel room and does not provide a reason for not reserving the room, our Hotel Check-in Email reminder ensures your travelers are prompted to book a hotel. Additionally, Acendas offers clients reporting on reason codes for why a hotel was not booked to assist with identifying repeat offenders.
- Finally, corporations are spending unnecessarily on their hotel programs with 15-30% of preferred properties that are not loaded properly when first audited. Acendas’ audit process ensures client’s preferred rates are loaded correctly and we work directly with the hotels for any discrepancies.
Want to know more about how Acendas RateWatch can assist your corporate program and reduce hotel costs?? Download a flyer about the service and ask your Acendas Travel account manager for details.
