Originally Posted by dagwood
What he is saying is that if too many of the rooms are being used at a particular discounted rate, then they will not be as profitable as other hotels not offering the rate. Hence when negotiations for the discount come in the following years, Marriott or the hotel may not give as good a discount because so many rooms were used in the previous year.
Correct me if I am wrong on this one.
If a hotel was 100% full all of the time, that might be the case, but if a full-service hotel charged rack rate all of the time, I assure you that the hotel would never be full.
While Socrates said that too many room going for a lower rate would generate less revenue than ones at full price, it ignores the fact that unsold rooms generate _zero_ revenue.
If you can reasonably predict that you can give a hotel so many room-nights a year, that helps them forecast their revenue. The "reasonable prediction" is based on historical use. If one stays at a particular corporate rate, this is added to the tally of room-nights used. You should see the rate the airline crews get
Marriott_Guy's assertion that the number of someone's corporate rate rooms actually booked at a particular proerty (his?) did not match that of what the corporation's travel departement booked and was questioning the discrepancy as perhaps being caused by "cheaters". This ignores the "honest" outside users of the rate (visitors, consultants, applicants) as well as the fact that Marriott (along with most travel related companies) are trying to steer people to use direct booking (their web site in particular).