Integrating travel and meetings spend in hotel negotiations

As travel buyers find themselves with less volume to offer for negotiating power they are repeatedly seeking to weave in M&E volume as compensation

Travel management company CWT and “lodging-as-a-service” (as it now styles itself) provider HRS have both issued 2024 hotel negotiation planning reports in recent weeks. Both make the same recommendation to buyers: integrate your spend.

Key takeaways

• CWT urges companies to offer hotels not only their regular transient business travel spend but as much of their meetings and events business as they can muster too;
• HRS goes even further in suggesting additional types of spend to throw into the negotiating pot, including long-stay bookings, day use of hotels and “bleisure” – employees tacking nights on to their business trip for leisure purposes;
• The logic of integrating spend sounds compelling, but does it work? Not necessarily. The promise of additional business does not necessarily help the hotel.

Get the full story at BTN Europe