Over the last couple months, major hotel chains such as Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt and IHG have launched independent marketing campaigns to woo travelers into booking hotels direct – but is booking direct really in the best interest of the business traveler? Obviously, as a Travel Management Company who books corporate hotel reservations, Covington Travel has a stake in this new development so we have done our due diligence to find out what these new initiatives really mean to the traveler.

If you are a loyalty member of one of the major hotel chains, you may have recently received promotional information about special rates that are only available to members. These promotions indicate that you must book your reservation on the hotel’s website, but what you may not know is that Covington can book these same rates for you.

The Hotels’ Motive

The hotel chains’ motivation in pushing direct bookings is actually to reduce the fees that they pay online travel agencies (OTA) like Expedia. Hotels have said that they don’t want to ruin the strong partnerships they have with Travel Management Companies (TMC) by not giving us – and therefore our travelers – access to the best rates.

A Hyatt representative shared, “The Hyatt Gold Passport member discount rewards members for their loyalty, and many of our members book their travel through our valued agency and corporate partners. The discount has always been available to these agencies, and we have taken steps to make it seamless for agencies to book it for our members and their clients.”

Booking Hotels Direct versus Using a TMC

In an attempt to reduce OTA costs, the hotels’ communications to their loyalty members understandably create confusion in the mind of the traveler. Travelers may think they can get a better rate on the hotel website, rather than booking through a managed travel program. That is not true; hotels have made the same loyalty rates available to Travel Management Companies.

From the organization’s perspective, direct bookings can’t be captured in the company’s total booking volume, so that could affect future negotiation leverage. In addition, direct bookings can compromise the organization’s duty of care responsibilities if they have no records of the travel arrangements until after the fact. Unmanaged spend (booking direct) has no alert system for the traveler or the company when bookings are outside travel policy, as there is when booking inside a managed travel process.

From the traveler’s perspective, booking hotels direct requires more time to check each chain’s website individually to make comparisons. Covington advisors have professional tools to shop all hotel properties in a given destination simultaneously, providing the traveler significant time savings in the reservation process.

A final benefit to booking hotels with Covington Travel is that in addition to advising the traveler of the lowest available rate at the time of booking, we compare those promotional rates to any other special offers at the same property that may include extra amenities or upgrades. For example, the loyalty rate at the Park Hyatt Chicago is $412.25*; however, through Covington’s exclusive Virtuoso membership, our travelers receive complimentary amenities of a room upgrade upon arrival (subject to availability), breakfast for two, a $100 hotel credit, and early check-in and late check-out for the nightly rate of $425*. In this case, the additional value far exceeds the extra $12.75, but the traveler always has their choice of the rate plan.

The takeaway is that in spite of the hotels’ encouragement for loyalty members to book direct, booking with Covington Travel provides more value to travelers and their organizations. For a personalized analysis of your hotel bookings and further discussion about how Covington can assist, contact our Business Travel Services team.

* Rates accurate at the time of publishing, subject to change and availability.