DALLAS - TRIPBAM, the Dallas-based hotel shopping, benchmarking and analytics provider, released a white paper outlining how the current COVID-19 crisis has altered the hotel industry and why adopting dynamic rate agreements can help corporate travel buyers improve their hotel programs for 2020 and beyond.
The white paper, “Break Free from Annual RFPs: How to Switch to a Fully Dynamic Program to Save Money and Work Smarter,” uses data gathered from TRIPBAM analytics since the crisis began and builds on conversations TRIPBAM has been having with buyers grappling with how to adjust hotel programs in light of ongoing volatility and uncertainty in the hotel category.
“The traditional hotel procurement process is dysfunctional even in the best of times,” said TRIPBAM CEO Steve Reynolds. “When we looked at what’s happened from COVID-19 - market rates have dropped below negotiated rates, supply and demand growth are out of balance, hotel companies have furloughed employees - and paired it with the pressures corporates are now facing to save every dollar possible, we knew it was time to give buyers a way to do things differently.”
While the corporate travel industry has previously been slow to embrace large scale changes to annual hotel sourcing, the white paper argues that the effects of COVID-19 make adopting dynamic discounts more practical to prevent overpaying and developments in technology make establishing evergreen agreements more feasible than in the past.