Corporates face the likelihood of more rises in rates as they begin the annual negotiations with hotels.
Priscilla Campbell, American Express Business Travel practice leader hotel advisory services, said it was going to be a "difficult negotiating climate" for companies in what was "definitely a seller's market."
Ms Campbell added: "We are expecting that rates will be on the increase as in previous years but there are some markets which will be flat or might even decline a little."
She said these would become clearer over the next couple of month but predicted that major destinations for business travellers like New York, London and Chicago would remain "tight" markets.
Ms Campbell told BTE that in the negotiations, hotels would be looking not only for volume and room nights but also for commitments on delivery.
Corporates which had strong compliance on hotel policy would fare better than those which were more lax.
But she said that corporates would have to deliver evidence of this strong policy and warned that hotels might not respond to RFPs from companies which had a poor record on delivery.
But Ms Campbell said attempts by hotels to impose dynamic pricing on clients had been "pushed back" by travel managers.
They needed more data to quantify any benefit from dynamic pricing over fixed negotiated rates and so far hotels had not provided it.
Ms Campbell said corporates needed to get their RFPS in by early September if the new rates were to be in place by December in time for 2008.
She added that despite the seller's market, corporates could make savings or contain costs if they could demonstrate volume and commitment.
* see BTE Analysis
* see BTE's recruitment site www.businesstraveljobs.com