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Buyers making the most of hotel buyer's mkt.

Article Excerpt
BTN editors recently discussed the state of hotel negotiations with travel buyers Clive Armitage, AstraZeneca director of travel, meeting and fleet purchasing, Mary Savoie-Stephens, PeopleSoft senior travel manager; and Yasuo Sonoda, Macromedia travel manager.

BTN: How important has the ability to deliver marketshare become in your hotel negotiations?

Clive Armitage: We've become very conscious of having to drive consolidation. We still have a ways to go, but, in some instances, we've been successful in driving more business to fewer suppliers, which translates into greater marketshare for them. That's our whole philosophy. Last year, we removed somewhere between 50 and 75 hotels from our program.

Yasuo Sonoda: It's very important. We're cutting back on the number of hotels in each city, but, even more to the point, we can go to each of the hotels we're considering and share with them the kind of compliance numbers we're able to deliver. Because of my company's travel policy, we're able to ensure a high degree of compliance. Consequently, I can say to the hotels that, if they're selected for the program, the marketshare will be there.

From the hotels' side, certain properties are so concerned about us hitting our marketshare targets that they've begun tracking our performance on a quarterly basis. It used to be that this subject only came up once a year, but no longer.

Armitage: In theory, having fewer hotel partners should mean greater marketshare. However, we're less able to mandate where people stay. In fact, among our travelers there still are some customers out there who like to book where they want to stay, rather than where we recommend. Yet, even then, by narrowing the number of preferred suppliers, we have a...