Work travel is growing at a rapid speed, with business travel spend expected to reach $1.7 trillion by 2022. Currently, up to 30% of business travellers (also often known as ‘road warriors’) travel at least once per month. What’s more, according to a recent survey, 75% of respondents said they had extended business trips for leisure purposes multiple times in a year.
With such promising statistics around corporate travellers, it’s no surprise that many hoteliers love having corporate guests in their hotel. But what is it about corporate guests that makes them so attractive for hotels? We did a little digging to find out what the true value of corporate travel is.
Why hoteliers love corporate guests
1.) They prefer the convenience of a hotel
Good news for hotel owners: corporate travellers are not that keen on adopting the sharing economy during business trips, or at least not when it comes to shared accommodation. As it stands, 79% of companies have not incorporated AirBnB into their booking procedures, and 54% have no plans to do so in the future. Instead, they prefer to lodge with different types of hotels (both independent and chain hotels), including those that offer extended stay options.
One of the main reasons for this is that corporate guests prefer the conveniences offered by a hotel. In contrast to leisure travellers, corporate guests are often short on time and are looking for a convenient hotel with adequate workspaces and internet access. Around 80% of business travellers get no more than eight hours of sleep, so as a hotelier, your goal should be to make their life as easy as possible during their stay. Corporate guests appreciate it when they don’t have to worry about things like breakfast, dry cleaning or room service.
2.) They have very high brand loyalty
Some more good news: corporate guests are very brand loyal and will stick to hotels they had a good experience with. According to Phocuswire, corporate travellers will book outside of their company’s guidelines just to stay with a brand to which they are loyal. What’s more, business travellers will book with a brand they prefer more than 50% of the time even when travelling for leisure.
As a hotelier, this presents a perfect opportunity to implement a special loyalty programme for returning guests. Recent research showed that up to 79% of travellers mentioned loyalty programmes as a main reason for choosing specific hotel brands.
Reward those that actively book on your website, and offer them special deals or exclusive benefits when they stay next. Keep corporate guests happy, and they will return!
3.) They tend to spend more per room
Yes, you read that right – corporate travellers are excellent customers as they are more likely to use other hotel services, such as restaurants, spas and meeting rooms. This, in turn, increases incremental spending per room and positively affects your RevPAR. According to Egencia, corporate travellers tend to spend 23% more on a hotel room. Even better, 82% of corporate bookings are from Monday to Thursday, which is a great way to fill up rooms during quieter periods.
The ‘bleisure trend’, in which corporate travellers incorporate an element of leisure into their work trips, has additionally resulted in an increase in the number of nights that a hotel gets booked for. This trend is particularly popular among millennial guests, as an impressive 70% of 25 to 35-year-olds desire to extend corporate trips for leisure reasons.
How to gain more corporate business
With corporate travellers being such financially lucrative guests, hotels all over the world are scrambling to attract more business bookers. Have a look at how to boost corporate hotel bookings to learn more about building up the right relationships with corporate guests.
The GDS is particularly important when it comes to receiving business from corporates as many large companies use it to manage their travel expenses during what’s known as the ‘RFP season.’ If you’d like to know more about how to sell hotel rooms to corporates, have a look at our recent article on the importance of RFPs to increase corporate GDS business.
For all other queries, do not hesitate to reach out to us directly. At HotelREZ, we support all of our member hotels in boosting their corporate hotel bookings as part of our distribution, representation, marketing and consultancy services. We maintain strong relationships with our RFP contacts year on year, our automated RFP tool REZtoMarket helps make the RFP process quicker for hotels and we use TargetworX™ to help manage unsolicited RFPs.
Find out how our RFP services can help you provide negotiated rates to corporate clients or get in touch today to discuss how we can help you receive more corporate hotel bookings.
About HotelREZ
HotelREZ Hotels & Resorts was founded in 2004 by Mark Lewis, an experienced hospitality industry professional and entrepreneur. Over the course of over a decade, the company has grown to be one of the leading hotel representation companies dedicated to marketing and connecting independent properties with bookers worldwide. HotelREZ now provides distribution, revenue, sales consultancy and marketing services and support to more than 1,500 hotels, apartments and hotel groups in over 100 countries including private label GDS chain code solutions. HotelREZ Hotels & Resorts is a SAAS company.
HotelREZ manages the brand Best Loved Hotels, a collection of unique global individual properties, with a dedicated GDS Programme, together with a Website and printed Directory, aimed at the high-end leisure agency and traveller. HotelREZ also incorporates the global World Rainbow Hotels, the world’s only GDS enabled LGBT global hotel consortia representing some 1200 hotels in 230 destinations across the globe.