Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | B | Business Travel News

Late hotel rate deals delay loading.

Article Excerpt
The process of loading 2006 negotiated hotel rates into global distribution systems, which many corporate travel buyers typically would begin this week and complete by the end of the month, at many companies is taking a back seat to the challenging task of renegotiating and securing 2006 contracts. As such, hotels once again are offering to preload placeholder rates ahead of final contracting, in lieu of terminating 2005 rates after Dec. 31.

Although such practices concern some buyers, the sense among travel managers and suppliers is that some of the contentious rate-loading issues--namely timeliness and accuracy-are improving, especially in light of centralized approaches adopted by hotel chains and more efficient tactics exacted by buyers.

"November is a bizarre month," Christine Chippendale, senior director of travel industry sales at Choice Hotels International, said last week. "Every step of the process is actually happening: We're still getting bids in, we're still receiving rates from hotels, we still have client request-for-proposal deadlines, we're beginning to load rates, but the biggest thing we're doing right now is renegotiating."

Chippendale said that although this time of the year often brings with it quite a bit of renegotiating and yet-to-be-finalized contracts, the market conditions that left many buyers unable...