Originally Posted by
Fightgar
Actually my company (a fortune 50) has a really sick discount with most hotel chains...the senior, AAA, other special rates don't come close. When I book rooms at the Holiday Inn in this one town where the regular price is 150, I get them for 87. We often can get rooms for 25-45% off, even if I'm only booking one at a time.
Oh, well, then, you've got another concern!
Not all hotel programs will give you points / status night counts / status stay counts for such corporate discounts. Some have a policy of "no earning on rates that are more than 35% discount" or whatever. (But since I don't have access to a corporate discount, I can't remember which ones, I know I just keep running across that all the time on different FT hotel program forums. I read a
lot of FT hotel program forums, so I can't remember which ones ones I've seen that in and which ones I haven't.)
Furthermore, some of the rich hotel points bonuses (which comletely outstrip normal hotel earning) require booking only through the hotel program website or maybe the hotel program toll-free number. So even if you can get the base points themselves for booking through a corporate travel site, you may lose out on the bonuses. (At Choice, you have to be upper-level elite before you can earn bonuses on qualifying reservations made through corporate travel agencies.)