Skift Take
A more honest accounting of how hotels manipulate their room rates to create more revenue helps both consumers and corporate travel managers make smarter travel decisions.
We recently launched our weekly Corporate Travel Innovation Report, a newsletter focused on the future of corporate travel, the big fault lines of disruption for the travel managers and buyers, the innovators emerging from the sector, and the changing business traveler habits that are upending how corporate travel is packaged, bought and sold.
As part of our increased attention to corporate travel, we're sitting down with a handful of industry leaders for our new Corporate Travel CEO Listening Series to discover what the people at the top are concerned with now and where they are looking for inspiration.
Booking a hotel room is ostensibly a simple task. Whether buying directly online, through a booking site, over the phone, or through a travel agent, consumers and business travelers are usually just happy to find a low rate.
Hotels, however, are constantly adjusting room rates in order to create more revenue. This can happen several times a day, or even several times an hour. So how can a consumer or business traveler actually know they've booked the lowest available rate?
TripBAM CEO Steve Reynolds thinks that volatile pricing from hotels, combined with fragmented data for travel managers, has led to pricier business trips for years. But companies and travel managers armed with the right information can better insulate clients from wasting money.
Many hotel rate monitoring services exist, but TripBAM has gained traction in the corporate travel space by providing a near real-time, transparent picture of the game that hotels play with rates.
Skift spoke to Reynolds about travel managers struggling to implement corporate travel policy, why business travelers will likely lose control over their trips in the future, and the simmering conflict between hotels and travel managers.
Skift: When it comes down to it, how many hotel rooms are booked outside of policy or outside travel management tools in the corporate travel ecosystem?
Reynolds: It's hard to measure, no one really knows and in reality there's probably not nearly as much savings as probably they think they're getting at the end of the day, which is pretty anemic to start. In the context of all of this hotel rates are going up and there is ju
