Travel managers are over-charged by hotels because they don’t check rates
A significant number of corporate travel managers are over-charged by hotels, according to research being conducted by HRS.
The ongoing survey, being carried out jointly with the GBTA Foundation, found 11% of travel managers were charged more by hotels than the rate they’d agreed.
And the extra charges often go unnoticed because travel managers don’t keep a close eye on hotel charges, according to HRS.
Of the 200 travel managers who have responded to the survey so far, only 2% conduct a rate audit on a weekly basis and only 7% do so monthly.
The rest of the companies only check every couple of months (22%), once a year (31%), or every time the rate is loaded (33%).
About 40% of travel managers rely on travellers to report errors, while others trust reports from travel management companies. Only half audit rates internally through manual work.
When they do perform audits, a third of travel managers find discrepancies more than 20% of the time, 30% find discrepancies 6% of the time and 37% find discrepencies 5% of the time, said HRS.
HRS revealed that a quarter of the 23,000 rates it analysed were incorrect or failed to correctly incorporate amenity details, and 11% were higher than originally negotiated between the company and the specific hotel, by an average of 14%.
A missing breakfast inclusion or breakfast at a higher cost than negotiated appeared in 16% of the bookings.
"Travel managers invest a lot of time and resources into negotiating room rates and amenities with hotels. This effort is only worthwhile when the negotiated rates and services are available to the traveller," said HRS CEO Tobias Ragge. "The results of the analysis show that rate audits are more important than many corporates might realise today."
Linsey McNeill
Editor Linsey McNeill has been writing about travel for more than three decades. Bylines include The Times, Telegraph, Observer, Guardian and Which? plus the South China Morning Post. She also shares insider tips on thetraveljournalist.co.uk
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