Hotels Flexed Some Muscle in Corporate Rate Negotiations
Photo Credit: An employee helps a customer check in at a Le Meridien hotel. Chicago Tribune/MCT / Abel Uribe
Skift Take
As long as leisure and business demand for hotels keeps increasing, those who buy travel for corporations will face tough negotiations for special rates.
After months of negotiations, hotels have emerged with higher rates for corporate customers in 2016.
But increases are likely not as high as hotels would have liked, especially considering they warned of hikes in the middle of last year.
During earnings calls this month, executives from several hotel companies gave vague indications — and sometimes actual numbers — about how their negotiations with travel buyers went over the season that typically stretches from September into December or January.
Both Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide and Hilton Hotels & Resorts said corporate negotiated rates for 2016 were increasing by mid-single digits.
Arne Sorenson, president and CEO of Marriott Inte
