MILLENNIUMand Copthorne Hotels has abandoned its offer of 19.99% commission to travel agents after failing to generate extra business.
The hotel chain reduced the commission for larger business travel agencies back to 10% this week. But, as Travel Weekly went to press, it was still holding talks with a number of smaller agencies to assess whether it was worth carrying on.
The higher commission level was introduced in December in a bid to incentivise agents to sell more of the group’s hotels.
Business travel director Fiona Morgan said:”You would have thought agents would jump at the chance to earn extra commission, but they didn’t.”
She said part of the reason was that some bookings systems were unable to cope with processing the higher commission so agents had to claim it manually. “A lot of them were making the bookings but did not bother to claim the higher commission,” she said.
Instead, the group is now speaking to agents individually to try to put together tailor-made incentive deals.
“We have hired an outside promotions company to come up with some quirky incentives. Some agencies say they want benefits for end users while others say they want to incentivise staff,” said Morgan.
The deals should be ready to start at the end of April or May.
n Millennium and Copthorne is launching a major trade awareness campaign to tell agents it is switching all its hotels to the MU code on the global distribution systems on April 1. At the moment, its Copthorne hotels are under the code BC.
Morgan admitted it was a risk switching to the MU code, which was only launched a year ago, but she said having two codes was confusing.
Poor response prompts Millennium and Copthorne Hotels to abandon scheme