Hotels adopting dynamic pricing models are posing a challenge to companies, a leading travel manager told the Association for Corporate Travel Executives' (ACTE) Forum in Helsinki.
Line Hein, travel manager responsible for hotels for the Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, said: "I like the idea that hotels are working on optimising their occupancy and we would like to support them but this (dynamic pricing) needs to be thought through for their clients as well.
"We are told that savings might be there – but that is not good enough for us. Our position is that we need transparency, we need to know the value of an agreement and did we get the expected value from it.
"With dynamic pricing we would have absolutely no idea so we will avoid dynamic pricing agreements for now."
Ms Hein said that if the dynamic pricing model became dominant among hotel groups, she would not make any commitments to them on market share but would do spot buying at the best available rates.
"Corporates would pick out the hotels offering the best rates instead of having preferred hotels," she said.
Earlier Michael Madison, director of strategic partnerships at hotel booking agency Hotelzon, said that hotel distribution costs were rising and hotels had to increase occupancy to make a profit.
But they could not fill them with corporate clients paying the lowest rates or there would be no yield from a large part of the hotel.
He said dynamic pricing, which originated in America where the hotel market is different for that of Europe, was "one-sided" and corporates should ask what was in it for them.
Anne Pekkanen, regional director of sales for Hilton in Finland and the Baltic States, said dynamic pricing was used for public rates at the moment but not for corporate ones.
"The corporate rates are static throughout the year and valid every day. At Hilton we have a best available rate (for the public) which fluctuates according to demand and this can sometimes undercut the corporate rate.
"Like most suppliers we have adopted dynamic pricing in the sense that we are moving with travel industry trends in a more dynamic environment."
* See BTE Analysis
* see BTE's job recruitment site www.businesstraveljobs.com