Originally Posted by cyberdad
One of the managers at my company did this with a Full-Serve Sheraton a couple of blocks from our office. Our guy just walked over and negotiated a $99 rate, to be exact. This was almost 50% off rack rate, and he felt like a real stud. That is, of course, until the first time he tried to use it. Bigwigs from NY office came in. The guy with whom our manager negotiated refused to honor the rate! No special event, etc. But hotel nearly sold out, and the GM just figured he could fetch a higher rate either from us or someone else.
I sat there thinking how I've never encountered that sort of junk from Marriott!
There are many factors which go into pricing an account's rate and without going into a long (and most likely boring) discussion on it I'll just say it's quite common to have Last Room Avail (LRA) rates and Non-Last Room Avail (NLRA) rates, what your manager agreed to was "NLRA" meaning the hotel could restrict it's avail just like the airlines do