Budget hotels
“We have been working to understand what the
corporate market wants and to engage with it, and we have now seen demand increase from corporate clients.
Last year we finished 34 per cent up in corporate business”
Pictured: Days Inn The mAjor plAyers
Accor: (UK and Ireland) Ibis (56), All Seasons/Ibis Styles (2), Etap/Ibis Budget (17). Ibis rates from £65, Ibis budget rates from £37.
www.accorhotels.com
choice: There are currently 39 Choice-brand properties in the UK: one Clarion, two Clarion Collection, 20 Comfort and 16 Quality properties. Rates vary.
www.choicehotelsuk.co.uk
eAsy hotels: UK hotels in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Earls Court, Heathrow, Paddington, South Kensington, Victoria and Luton airport, plus Porto, Basel, Amsterdam, Berlin, Buda- pest, Dubai, Sofia and Zurich. Rates lead in around £29.
www.easyhotel.com
hAmpton by hilton: Eight UK sites plus one hotel in Turkey and one in Germany. Rates vary.
www.hampton.hilton.com
holidAy inn express: 115 hotels in the UK and 2,114 hotels worldwide with 11 hotels in the UK pipeline. Rates vary.
www.hiexpress.com
Jury’s inn: 25 hotels in the UK, six in Ireland, one in Prague. Rates can lead in from £49.
www.jurysinns.com
trAvelodge: 501 hotels including four hotels in Spain and 11 in Ireland (the rest in the UK). Rates from £19.
www.travelodge.co.uk
WhitbreAd’s premier inn: 600 hotels across the UK and five in the pipeline in India and Middle East. Rates from £29.
www.premierinn.com
WyndhAm: Owner of Days Inn brand. There are currently 59 UK Days Inns, with 1,800 worldwide. Rates vary.
www.daysinn.co.uk
➔can offer rooms booked well in advance
for as little as £25.” Tune Hotels works along similar lines.
you’ll pay extra for towels, toiletries and a wifi connection or you can buy a comfort package that includes 24 hours of wifi, use of a TV, a hairdryer, a safe, towels and toiletries for £7. Tune's ceO, mark Lankester, says, “The
business model for Tune is to continue to offer a range of optional add-ons at an additional cost. This allows us to keep rates as low as possible and allows guests the ultimate flexibility to choose and pay only for facilities they want and will use.” That said, the group is developing a
coffee shop area in the lobby of its London Liverpool Street property and will roll this out in future properties. it’s not just the actual guests that the
budget sector wants to keep sweet, either. The bookers and financial director back at the office are in their sights too. Witness GDS-bookable premier inn. it
now has its Business Account which allows companies to mandate travel policies and view and track all of their spend. The account also lets bookers set food and drink spend limits for their staff. All of a company’s expenditure is then managed together and a monthly bill is delivered to the client. it also has a number of online solutions
for its clients that mesh with their own company intranets. it also offers dedicated landing pages with direct links to a company’s specific travel arrangements.
Negotiating rates choice Hotels, also on the GDS, is making the effort too. Says Garvan, “Some of the largest budget hotel brands do not negotiate rates with corporates. We talk to corporate travel managers, Tmcs and HBAs
to get the client the rate and product that is right for them while still making it sustainable for everyone.” Jury’s inn says it has seen big wins in
corporate business thanks to the fact that it always alerts clients with negotiated rates to its best available rate, often saving them money. Bookers, says Webster, also like the Business Booker tool that they can use for management information gathering. Travelodge is now entering into dialogue
with key corporates and travel management companies and is negotiating rates where pre-recession it had not bothered. The company will be fully operational on the GDS within 12 months. it launched a Business Account card last
September that gives free credit since payments are made on a monthly basis. Statements are fully itemised so there is visibility of spend and online account management is available 24 hours a day. “We have been working to understand
what the corporate market wants and to engage with it, and we have now seen demand increase from corporate clients. Last year we finished 34 per cent up in corporate business,” says parsons. We may all be looking forward to the end
of this recession but once it has passed, no-one could blame the budget sector for looking on it fondly as a time when the corporate traveller woke up to its prolific money-saving potential. As Shackleton notes, “Hopefully the fact
that corporates have been booking with us will become habit-forming long after the recession and financial directors will like the fact that we have been saving them plenty of money. After all, why should the share holders fork out for employees to stay in four-star hotels?” Well, arguably, no-one ever liked the bowing and scraping anyway…
80 THE BUSINESS TRAVEL MAGAZINE
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