THEGUILD of Business Travel Agents is to tackle the minefield of hotel net rates at its next Hotel Working Party meeting on Wednesday.
As more and more corporate clients demand net rates from their travel agents, the GBTA is looking at the difficulties of having both commissionable and net rates in the marketplace.
The Guild’s hotel executive Julie Grout said the issue was riddled with complications.
“It’s a very delicate subject. The guildhasn’t formed any views on this yet but it is something we need to look at.”
Grout said with the move to management fees, an increasing number of corporate clients were looking for net rates.
At present this is being negotiated by agents on an account by account basis.
But she said the difficulties arose when corporates had volume net deals for, say, a selection of London hotels, but could not provide this rate in one-off situations when travellers needed to stay in towns where the clients did not have a net rate deal.
In this situation, the client will often fall back on a consortia rate, which are special rates negotiated by the larger agencies or by the Guild itself through its Hotel Guide.
But, at present, these consortia rates are commissionable.
According to Grout, this causes administration problems because the agent is having to process some rates which are commissionable and others rates which are not.
One solution being suggested is for hotels to offer net consortia rates, alongside commissionable consortia rates.
“Having dual rates is a huge minefield. It means agents need to be retrained, it causes problems for the global distribution systems, and it will also have an impact on the hotels’ average room rate, or revenue per available room,” said Grout.