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Cos. try holding hotel rates: buyers seeking to extend 2005 rates as increases loom.

Article Excerpt
Several corporate travel buyers are foregoing the standard hotel request-for-proposals process and seeking to extend 2005 negotiated terms and rates into next year, in addition to deploying such time-tested tactics to secure favorable rates as limiting the number of preferred hotels in certain markets. Such negotiating approaches, if successful, initially would keep rates flat, despite the consensus among hoteliers and analysts that corporate negotiated rates will increase sharply--by double-digit percentages, according to some estimates.

"The advice that we've been giving is to expect the 7 percent to 10 percent to even the 15 percent range we've been quoted by some of the hotel chains," said Kim Maschoff, WorldTravel BTI Travel Procurement Solutions director of hotel business consulting, of negotiated rate increases for 2006. "It will vary by market, by tier and by client. Those that have had significant volume, perhaps over the $50 million range, you could say that their inflation is going to be in the 4.5 percent to 5 percent range."

Choice Hotels International senior director of travel industry sales Christine Chippindale early...

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