TripBam: Q3 Market Rates Level Off But Set to Rise

Global market hotel rates have declined since early June, and lessening demand for leisure helped “bring down rates for corporate transient, particularly in primary markets that entertain a strong mix of business and leisure travel,” according to a new report from reshopping platform Tripbam.

The company’s September 2022 Market Snapshot Report showed global market hotel rates were down 6 percent from TripBam’s June report. TripBam also expects “corporate bookings to continue to increase globally into the fall as more companies ramp up trips and off-site meetings,” according to the report.

Global market hotel rates are “10.6 percent higher now than they were during this same period in 2019,” according to the report, and “rates will likely continue to increase [for corporates], owing to continued pent-up demand for less price-sensitive business transient travel, room availability issues due to staff shortages, as well as rising costs for goods, labor and energy.”

With rates high, “static negotiated rates are proving more valuable than dynamic discounts,” according to the report. Corporate travelers among TripBam’s dataset are booking static negotiated rates 31 percent of the time, which is “on par” with the second quarter of 2022, but less than the 43 percent share from the third quarter of 2019, according to the September report.

TripBam’s Business Travel Index, which incorporates a combination of business travel rates and volume on an ascending 100-point scale set to 2019 levels measuring the industry’s recovery from Covid-19, recorded a third-quarter “corporate travel health score” of 79 out of 100, up 12 percent from a score of 67 according to TripBam’s June report.

The report utilizes TripBam’s customer data pulled over a 12-month period. The booking data covers only the company’s customer’s corporate bookings.

Angelique Platas www.businesstravelnews.com