Reshopping and auditing specialist TripBam has released its latest Market Snapshot Report and predicts that it is going to be a battle buyers to secure the hotel and air deals
they once could, and that business travel won’t fully recover to 2019
levels, “owing to the rise in remote work, sustainability initiatives,
and economic pressures.”
The nine-page report offers a short market review of both airlines and hotels, as well as tips for buyers to deploy in their 2024 strategies.
“We’re now seeing volumes pick up in traditional business markets where they hadn’t previously, which suggests business transient travel is no longer just happening in 'need to be there' markets,” states the report.
“We’re still a far way off the 60 per cent share of negotiated rates booked pre-pandemic. Yet, if buyers successfully add negotiated rates back into their programmes for 2024, we can expect further improvement.”
Looking to 2024, hotels will continue to demand rate increases from corporate accounts, but buyers who adopt a continuous sourcing approach could see rates come down outside of the traditional sourcing period.
And TripBam says buyers shouldn’t hesitate to push back on additional increases if they have confidence in volumes and the ability to “shift share” to realise better deals from hotels.
In the air arena, hogging the headlines for the last six months has been American Airlines’ removal of some of its content from GDS-EDIFACT channels.
TripBam has been monitoring the AA's published NDC and GDS-EDIFACT fares to track the gaps. “The gap for unrestricted fares is shrinking as we enter the traditional business travel season. GDS-EDIFACT published fares are decreasing,” states the report.
The data suggests the gaps in fares between GDS-EDIFACT and NDC offers will ebb and flow based on seasonality and “AA’s need to balance leisure and managed business travel demand until TMCs and OBTs catch up to the need for NDC content.”
TripBam’s report concludes with a page of advice for buyers, including fighting for discounts in both airline and hotel negotiations, looking out for traveller benefits on deals instead of just monetary value, staying flexible on hotel deals to manage geographic clusters and caps for travellers, and to audit every booking.