Hilton Takes Top Honors

The 2021 edition of BTN’s annual Hotel Report differs significantly from its traditional coverage. This edition’s focus is not on brand performance, as there was too little business travel that took place the past 12 months, and some buyers did not feel comfortable rating brands when booking volumes were so low. Instead, the survey includes ratings on a chainwide level only, and on just four Covid-19-related attributes.

Hilton Worldwide earned the top spot among corporate travel buyers, followed by Marriott International, Hyatt Hotels Corp. and IHG Hotels & Resorts, all within a couple hundredths of a point from each other. BWH Hotel Group and Accor, while not making the final cut due to lower usage rates among survey participants, were close behind, and performed well in certain categories.

The survey asked travel buyers to rate chains on their overall Covid-19 response in implementing health and safety plans—the attribute in which all the hotel companies scored their highest marks—effective client communications during the pandemic, corporate contracting management, and their ability to maintain operational properties in key business locations. Hilton garnered the highest marks for two of the four: its Covid-19 response and ability to maintain operations.

“We are really proud of the work we did,” said Hilton SVP of worldwide sales Frank Passanante. With Hilton CleanStay, its cleanliness and safety program, “we took what was foundationally very high standards and elevated them throughout the entire stay,” he said. “Flexibility, cleanliness, these are the things customers told us they needed us to focus on.”

For maintaining operations, Passanante said Hilton looked to its properties in China to get an early perspective on the effect Covid-19 had on the business and to gain insights to manage through the crisis. “It required us to evolve how we managed our hotels,” he said, adding that engagement and communication with key accounts was important. “One thing we were able to do was shift resources internally to where the needs were.”

An example of how Hilton did that was the deployment of its catastrophic task force. “As crises unfolded, new needs emerged,” Passanante said. “We moved resources, doubling down on how we supported catastrophic events. We always had a desk, but we more than doubled that and followed the globe to make sure there was continuity in how we serviced that. It became a 24/7 response team to help with anything that came up, whether weather-related [such as a hurricane] or other crisis.”

Marriott took top marks for effective client communications during the pandemic and second for its overall pandemic response. The company’s SVP of global sales, Tammy Routh, said that staying in contact with every customer made the difference, even though the company had significantly reduced its workforce. “People that formerly handled five accounts now handled 20,” she said. “The direction I gave them was, ‘Every day you come into the office, the No. 1 priority is to stay in contact with your customers.’ ”

Routh said Marriott did that in two ways. First, the company checked in on customers personally. “We were all dealing with this, and I didn’t want them to think we called only when asking for business,” she said. The second was to stay apprised of clients’ stances on travel policies, return to office, and group and meeting philosophies. “We took that information and then made decisions based on the customer voice. We kept the dialogue going weekly, in some cases more, so the customer felt that their voice mattered.”

Best Western also scored well on its pandemic response, and SVP and CMO Dorothy Dowling credited the company’s longtime commitment through its “I Care Clean” program, launched in 2012. “We created a foundational program and started deconstructing the guest room and public spaces and really looked at where the high-touch levels were from a customer point of view. … We created a cultural shift in the commitment to cleanliness,” she said. Once the pandemic hit, the company evolved the program further into “We Care Clean,” with an even more elevated level of cleaning protocols, and the sales team focused on communicating that to the buyer community.

For Accor, which according to SVP of sales and distribution Markus Keller is the largest hotel operator in every geography except North America and China, communications during the pandemic “came with challenges and opportunities,” he said, adding that the company was able to implement its All Safe hygiene and safety standards in more than 4,900 hotels worldwide, despite geographical dispersion. In communicating those protocols, “in the early part of the crisis, we had direct one-to-one communications with key customers, and wrote letters explaining what we were doing,” Keller said. “We conducted tens of thousands of phone calls, from headquarters as well as in each region to their respective client bases. We switched a lot of our sales activities to virtual. … We shared what we were doing and how we were reopening hotels. We also shared not only information about ourselves but also what we observed globally in the markets where we were present, and that was something that [clients] appreciated as well.” 

IHG outscored its competitors for corporate contracting management. “We’ve focused on being nimble and responding to the needs of our customers throughout the pandemic,” said IHG SVP of global sales Derek DeCross in an email. “We extended rates and discounts from 2021 into 2022 to maintain flexibility for our customers who are still uncertain about travel programs and budgets. We also implemented dynamically priced products to provide customers with confidence that they had access to a market-appropriate rate. This has been a bright spot for both buyers and suppliers given resource and demand constraints. As a result, we’ve seen an increase in adoption of dynamic rates across corporate verticals, particularly in finance, retail and construction/engineering.”

Contracting was the one category where both Hilton and Marriott scored below Hyatt and IHG. “One thing we have heard loud and clear from customers is we need rate assurance,” Hilton’s Passanante said. “There are many unanswered questions on markets and the volatility of some markets. 2020 proved that dynamic pricing models did provide a benefit to customers. We are focused on providing rate assurance, and dynamic is a key part of that answer. And delivering greater efficiency in what we know is a tedious and challenging [request-for-proposals] process, and resources across the board are more constrained than ever. We are trying to listen and respond and get it right.”

Marriott once again offered to roll over rates into 2022, and many buyers took that offer, according to the company. But some buyers noted that Marriott wasn’t willing to negotiate RFPs this season. Routh countered that the company “will always sell the way the customer wants to buy,” she said. “We weren’t sure what the right thing to do was for the pricing season, and we spent time with the revenue management teams trying to figure out how to put forward something where everybody wins. And travel buyers really do not know how much travel they will have. Our analysis and numbers prove that rolling over rates with rate protection is a winning value proposition for all parties. And we would never want buyers to be in the position where the retail rate is better. … If a customer wanted a full RFP, of course we would honor that.”

Hyatt was the only company to score above a four in all four of the attributes rated, with its top score for its Covid-19 response. “It was everything we implemented, including hygiene managers on staff at every property,” said Hyatt VP of global sales for the Americas Gus Vonderheide. “We will continue to work with outside organizations to audit the properties on a regular basis, because we feel strongly that we could not do that ourselves. That’s not going away in 2022. As business travel returns, it will be even more important than a year ago to show we are still living and breathing the standards we set.”

Vonderheide added that “it’s easy to say, ‘let’s get back to normal,’ but travelers will still be at different levels of comfort. Some were ready a year ago. Some might not be for another year. We need to talk to all of them. … We immediately believed that flexibility and creativity would be key to getting through this.” The company offered different pricing models and contract opportunities that “we felt would be a good variety or a large enough variety to appeal to the masses,” he said. “Over the past year and a half, I’m very proud of the comments we’ve heard from customers. It’s not a seller’s or buyer’s market; it’s a partner’s market. If ever there was a time to benefit from strongly being together, this is it.”