Global hotel rates have declined since early June as slower demand from leisure travellers helped bring down corporate prices, particularly in “primary markets that entertain a strong mix of business and leisure travel," according to a new report from reshopping platform Tripbam.
The company's September 2022 Market Snapshot Report showed global market hotel rates were down 6 per cent compared with its June report.
TripBam said it expected “corporate bookings to continue to increase globally into the autumn as more companies ramp up trips and off-site meetings”.
Global market hotel rates are “10.6 per cent higher now than they were during this same period in 2019,” according to the report.
TripBam added that rates are likely to increase again for corporates “owing to continued pent-up demand for less price-sensitive business transient travel, room availability issues due to staff shortages, as well as rising costs for goods, labour and energy”.
With current hotel rates high, “static negotiated rates are proving more valuable than dynamic discounts,” according to the report. Corporate travellers are booking static negotiated rates 31 per cent of the time, which is “on par” with the second quarter of 2022, but less than the 43 per cent share in the third quarter of 2019, according to TripBam.
TripBam’s Business Travel Index, which incorporates a combination of business travel rates and volume on an ascending 100-point scale set to 2019 levels to measure the industry’s recovery from Covid-19, recorded a third quarter "corporate travel health score" of 79 out of 100, up from a score of 67 in June’s report.
The report utilises TripBam’s customer data pulled over a 12-month period. The booking data covers only its customers' corporate bookings.