The hospitality industry’s labor issues make it hard to provide the services many corporate travelers expect. According to hotel company execs, service levels are recovering but at different paces depending on location. Travel buyers understand the staffing dilemmas facing many properties and try to ensure travelers know what they’ll encounter. Beyond the immediate term, some…
Demand for corporate travel lodging is accelerating but it’s not just volume that’s closing in on familiar territory. Average rates and the brands getting bookings also look more like they did in 2019, according to Tripbam data presented this month. “We are seeing a rapid increase in rate,” said Tripbam CEO Steve Reynolds during his…
Hotel executives say they are reconsidering and reinstating brand standards, potentially impacting business traveler expectations and corporate sourcing. Brand standards govern the responsibilities of property owners and operators. Ranging from design, maintenance and renovations to operations, amenities and customer services, they support consistent experiences and define brands. Prominent among them are specifications for food and…
While there are plenty of Covid vaccine mandates for indoor places around the country and the world, there are few for hotels. In the United States, they’re limited to a handful of smaller boutique hotels and leisure/resort properties — for now. A few other countries already enacted rules requiring proof of vaccination for lodging guests,…
The largest player is after the market’s smallest accounts, which by many accounts are leading the business travel recovery. Continuing a customer segmentation strategy, American Express Global Business Travel last week brought to the United States an employee spend management solution for small and medium-sized enterprises first introduced last year in the United Kingdom. With…
The latest in a recurring survey by the Global Business Travel Association showed growing optimism among corporate travel buyers regarding their colleagues’ willingness to travel. Seventy-five percent of 290 buyer members from around the world last week indicated their companies’ employees were “very” or “somewhat” willing to travel for business “in the current environment,” according…
Last week, a federal court sentenced a Baltimore-area former owner of a travel booking company to a year and a day in prison for operationalizing one of the oldest tricks in the corporate travel book — using IBM’s rate code. It’s been a half-joke in the travel industry for decades, but it’s fraud, and some…
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