The annual hotel RFP is not dying – but it is delivering far less value than the industry assumes. With hospitality-specific win rates of just 5-7% compared to a 44% average across all industries, and roughly 90% of awarded properties being incumbents year after year, the corporate RFP cycle has become an enormously expensive ritual that largely reshuffles business hotels would have captured anyway. Hotels that recognise this – and redirect energy toward dynamic pricing, omnichannel distribution, and bleisure-aware rate design – will outperform those still running on the RFP treadmill.
Global business travel spending hit $1.47 trillion in 2024, surpassing its 2019 peak, and is forecast to reach $1.70 trillion by 2026. But the landscape underneath those topline numbers has fundamentally changed. Hybrid work has reduced routine travel while concentrating spend on purposeful, longer trips. New-age TMCs are reshaping distribution. And GDS – far from declining – has quietly overtaken direct channels as the dominant source of corporate room nights. The hotels that thrive in this environment will be those that approach corporate rate strategy as a dynamic, multi-channel commercial discipline rather than a once-a-year pricing exercise.
The RFP industrial complex
The corporate hotel RFP cycle follows a grinding annual calendar. Buyers collect data in Q2-Q3, distribute RFPs in August–September, hotels scramble to respond within days, and multiple rounds of negotiation drag through Q4 before rates are loaded into GDS systems by January. The average acceptance cycle takes 76.6 days, with 92% of bids going through at least one negotiation round.
The effort appears staggering relative to the return especially for hotels with a diverse market segment mix. Hotel sales teams invest 2–4 hours per individual RFP response, with some properties spending two full weeks managing a single RFP cycle. Hotels spend an average of $40,100 annually just managing B2B distribution networks. And with that 5–7% win rate, the vast majority of that investment produces nothing. As Dan Stagnitta, travel services consultant at Elevance Health, put it bluntly: “I think it’s just silliness and busy work to engage in this RFP process where change isn’t occurring.”
Michael Laumanns, Accor’s VP of Global Corporate Clients, framed the paradox perfectly: the average hotel programme consists of 90% incumbent properties, yet the industry insists on re-tendering those relationships every twelve months. “Why is it possible for every other vertical in business travel to run multiyear contracts,” he asked, “but for hotels, both suppliers and buyers seem to have this love-hate relationship with the RFP process?”
The numbers support this scepticism. Cvent’s platform processed $16.5 billion in sourcing volume in 2024, but fixed rates still account for approximately 85% of accepted corporate rates – a figure that has barely moved. More than half of group RFPs sent to hotels receive no response at all. And 64% of hoteliers admit they have no idea how much revenue slips away due to poorly managed RFP processes.
None of this means RFPs are worthless. They retain real utility for entering new markets, benchmarking rates, and maintaining pricing discipline. GBTA’s Suzanne Neufang correctly notes that strategic sourcing helps organisations manage risk and sustainability goals beyond just rates. But the industry’s default – treating every corporate relationship as if it requires annual re-tendering – imposes enormous costs for marginal gains.
Leakage on negotiated programmes
Perhaps the most damning indictment of the traditional RFP model is what happens after the rates are negotiated. 61% of business travellers book outside their organisation’s managed programme, according to Direct Travel. Fewer than 40% use their company’s recommended hotel providers when booking. One professional services firm tracked by CWT found that 73% of its travellers booked hotels outside the negotiated programme before intervention.
From the hotel side, the picture is equally sobering. 98% of hoteliers report losing revenue to rate leakage, with an average 6% annual revenue loss – rising to 7% for large chains. Nearly half of wholesale rates end up with unintended distribution partners, and 49% of rate loading errors are caused by human mistakes. Tripbam CEO Steve Reynolds has gone so far as to say that Last Room Availability contracts “aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.”
The root cause is convenience, not defiance. GBTA found that the most common reason travellers book outside approved channels is simple inconvenience (36%), followed by hotel being a last-minute decision (30%). The implication is clear: negotiating an aggressive corporate rate means little if the distribution and booking experience cannot compete with a traveller’s default behaviour of opening a consumer app.
Shifting power balance
The post-pandemic leverage dynamics have tilted back toward buyers. A BTN survey of 232 travel managers found that while 61% expect 2026 rates to be higher than 2025, only 24% anticipate increases exceeding 5%. CWT and GBTA project North American hotel ADR growth of just 1.6% in 2026, with EMEA at 1.9%. Softening leisure demand has removed hoteliers’ fallback revenue cushion, and real-time benchmarking tools now give procurement teams instant visibility into rate competitiveness.
Against this backdrop, the case for dynamic corporate rates has never been stronger – yet adoption remains stubbornly low. Only 7% of corporate buyers primarily negotiate dynamic rates, though 64% now use a mix of dynamic and fixed. The resistance is real: buyers cite budget unpredictability, difficulty verifying that the BAR used for discount calculations is legitimate, and straightforward institutional preference for certainty. One travel manager in the BTN survey stated flatly: “Dynamic rates have not been delivering the expected savings.”
Hotels can overcome this resistance with a tiered approach. CWT’s consultants recommend using fixed rates for first-tier markets with 250+ room nights, where cost certainty justifies the negotiation effort, while deploying dynamic percentage-off-BAR rates in second-tier and long-tail markets where volume doesn’t warrant static pricing. The key is offering credible forecasting. As Xotels advises: show corporates detailed monthly and annual cost projections based on historical BAR data, and you transform from a supplier demanding flexibility into a strategic partner enabling better budgeting.
Major chains signalled this direction years ago. Marriott shifted to dynamic consortia rates in 2003–2004. Hilton and IHG both eliminated fixed consortia rates effective January 2005, with Hilton’s Greg Cross stating: “We’ve eliminated static pricing in favour of providing our best available rate, which is dynamic and can change daily.” The fact that two decades later 85% of rates remain fixed tells us buyer behaviour changes slowly – but also that the hybrid model (fixed for critical partners, dynamic for everything else) is where the industry is genuinely converging.
Revenue managers structuring dynamic agreements should consider floors and caps carefully. Xotels argues that ceiling rates on dynamic contracts are “counter-effective for the hotel” and that the optimal approach is full dynamic pricing paired with transparent cost forecasting. Duetto’s Open Pricing methodology – optimising by segment, channel, and room type – enables properties to report +6% RevPAR uplift in year one, demonstrating that dynamic pricing generates measurable incremental value when properly executed.
Is GDS is winning the corporate distribution war?
One of the most counterintuitive findings in recent industry research comes from the HEDNA–NYU study published in January 2026: GDS has overtaken direct channels as the leading source of corporate hotel room nights. Between 2023 and 2025, corporate and consortia travellers steadily shifted bookings away from direct toward GDS – and GDS bookings consistently achieve higher ADRs than direct. D-EDGE data confirms the momentum: GDS hotel bookings grew 14.3% between 2023 and 2025, with average booking values reaching €412.80.
This finding challenges the “book direct” orthodoxy that has dominated hotel marketing for a decade. For leisure travellers, direct channels remain critical. But corporate travel is managed travel, flowing through TMCs, booking tools, and policy-compliant platforms that rely on GDS infrastructure. Hotels that underinvest in GDS optimisation are leaving corporate revenue on the table. Properties with fully optimised GDS content see conversion rates improve by 25–30%, according to Sabre.
For hotels, GDS bookings usually involve a small per‑booking transaction fee (often around 3–8 USD) plus an 8–12% travel‑agent commission, compared with OTA commissions that often run 15–30% of room revenue. In many corporate TMC programmes, GDS‑driven business remains one of the more cost‑efficient channels, but hotels typically still fund an agent commission and the corporate negotiated rate discount on top of the GDS transaction fee, unless they have negotiated a net‑rate or fee‑only model.
The competitive landscape, however, is evolving. New-age TMCs like Spotnana treat GDS as one content source among many, pulling hotel inventory from GDS, OTA APIs, and direct CRS connections simultaneously. Spotnana’s Content Engine aggregates content from Amadeus, Sabre, Travelport, Booking.com, and Expedia into a single platform. Hotels that are only on GDS will miss bookings from these multi-source platforms; hotels that are only on OTAs will miss traditional managed travel. Omnichannel presence is no longer optional.
Traditional versus new-age TMCs
The TMC landscape has been reshaped by two forces: consolidation at the top and disruption from below. Amex GBT’s $540 million acquisition of CWT, completed in September 2025, created a mega-TMC with combined European sales exceeding €14 billion. BCD Travel follows at €6.41 billion. Together, these traditional players dominate enterprise corporate travel.
But the growth is elsewhere. Navan has reached $7.6 billion in gross bookings with 10,000+ customers. TravelPerk (recently rebranded as Perk) raised $104 million from SoftBank and acquired AmTrav and ClickTravel to build US and UK presence. Spotnana, founded in 2020, provides back-end infrastructure that powers multiple TMCs including Direct Travel’s Avenir platform, backed by Concur co-founder Steve Singh.
These platforms operate on fundamentally different architecture. Traditional TMCs rely on GDS-based PNR workflows designed in the 1960s. Spotnana built PNR-independent architecture using microservices and real-time API calls to every relevant content source simultaneously. The practical implication for hotels is significant: new-age TMCs can surface hotel inventory from any connected source – GDS, OTA, direct API – meaning hotels need distribution coverage across all these channels to capture bookings.
The SME segment, representing 57.6% of the TMC market and growing at 7.1% annually, is where new-age TMCs are winning decisively. Hotels targeting this increasingly important segment need strategies beyond traditional RFP participation:
- Ensure inventory is available on OTA and wholesale channels that feed into platforms like Spotnana and Navan
- Build or enable direct API connectivity for corporate booking platforms
- Develop SME-friendly programmes with self-service corporate portals, following Marriott’s Business Access model
- Offer dynamic pricing accessible outside traditional GDS rails
Meanwhile, the concept of “managed travel 2.0” – open booking with guardrails – is becoming the default operating model. Approximately 65% of business travel spending remains unmanaged, and new-age TMCs address this by combining consumer-grade booking experiences with automated policy enforcement. Navan rewards employees who book within policy and below budget. Ramp Travel allows booking on any platform while automatically checking against corporate rules. Hotels that make themselves easy to book through these platforms capture spend that would otherwise leak.
Bleisure reshaping corporate rate economics
The bleisure phenomenon has moved from trend to structural shift. 62% of business travellers now incorporate at least one leisure element per trip. Marriott reported business trip length of stay up 20% versus 2019. The bleisure travel market is valued at approximately $762–816 billion in 2025, growing at 12–17% annually.
The critical data point for hotels: 82% of bleisure travellers stay at the same property for both the business and leisure portions of their trip. This means every corporate booking is a potential extended stay – and hotels that build bleisure awareness into their rate architecture capture significantly more revenue per guest.
Forward-thinking chains are already responding. Marriott’s BreakAway programme offers up to 30% discounted leisure rates to employees of its most important corporate accounts, keeping personal travel within the managed ecosystem. Hilton launched Signia, a brand specifically designed for bleisure travellers combining meeting facilities with premium leisure amenities. IHG’s Crowne Plaza introduced pay-per-use coworking spaces. These aren’t peripheral experiments – they reflect recognition that the distinction between business and leisure travel is dissolving.
Hotels should incorporate bleisure into corporate rate design through incremental stay discounts (10% off for an extra night, 20% for two), competitive weekend extension rates aligned with corporate pricing, and bundled packages combining work amenities with leisure experiences. The goal is to prevent the pricing cliff that occurs when a business traveller’s corporate rate expires mid-stay and leisure-rate sticker shock pushes them to consider alternative properties for the weekend.
Corporate travel managers are increasingly supportive. 43% of programmes now have defined bleisure policies, up significantly from pre-pandemic levels. 88% of companies allow bleisure travel, and 73% of employees view leisure extension as a corporate perk that influences employer choice. For procurement teams, the economics often work: Saturday-night stays frequently cost less than Friday evening flights home, making bleisure extensions cost-neutral.
What winning looks like in 2026
The hotels that will capture their fair share of corporate travel in 2026 share several characteristics. They treat corporate rate strategy as a year-round commercial discipline rather than a seasonal event – adopting continuous sourcing models, quarterly performance reviews, and dynamic rate structures that respond to market conditions. They invest in GDS optimisation while simultaneously ensuring visibility on new-age TMC platforms. They use rate auditing tools like Tripbam (now Emburse) to monitor compliance and identify leakage – the platform finds savings on more than 60% of hotel bookings searched, with average savings exceeding $100 per stay.
Most importantly, they integrate revenue management with corporate sales. The siloed approach – where sales negotiates rates and revenue management manages yield independently – is obsolete. Duetto and IDeaS both offer segment-specific pricing engines that enable displacement analysis before accepting corporate rate proposals, ensuring that contracted business genuinely increments revenue rather than cannibalising higher-yield segments.
The corporate hotel RFP is not dead, but pretending it is the centrepiece of corporate rate strategy is increasingly untenable. The real opportunity lies in the spaces the traditional model ignores: the 61% of business travellers booking outside managed programmes, the second-tier markets where dynamic rates outperform fixed, the bleisure extensions that can add 20% to length of stay, and the new-age TMC platforms where tomorrow’s corporate bookings are already flowing. Hotels that shift from defending their position in the annual RFP cycle to actively pursuing these opportunities – with better data, smarter pricing, and genuine omnichannel distribution – will not just survive the transformation of corporate travel. They will define it.
Sources:
https://www.knowland.com/2024/08/hotel-rfp-process/https://revenue-hub.com/rethink-your-hotel-rfp-process-to-win-more-bids/
https://www.phocuswire.com/gbta-business-travel-2025-spend-increase
https://www.cvent.com/en/blog/insights/cvent-transient-insider-RFP-season-analysis
https://www.businesstravelnews.com/Research/Hotel-Survey-Report/2025/Buyers-Plan-For-Small-2026-Hotel-Rate-Hikes-At-Most
https://www.businesstravelnews.com/Intelligence/Buyers-Appear-to-Limit-Corp-Rate-Hikes-in-Knotty-2025-Hotel-Market
https://www.businesstravelnews.com/Procurement/Will-Annual-Hotel-RFPs-Ever-End
https://www.businesstravelnews.com/More-News/Hotel-Rates-Go-Dynamic-Hilton-Intercontinental-End-Fixed-Pricing
https://gbta.org/hotel-and-meetings-sourcing-enters-a-new-era-with-rfps-driving-value-beyond-cost-savings/
https://gbta.org/global-business-travel-and-events-prices-set-to-stabilize-through-2025-and-2026-amid-looming-economic-uncertainty/
https://www.mycwt.com/insights/selecting-dynamic-vs-fixed-hotel-pricing-for-your-travel-program/
https://www.mycwt.com/insights/2026-global-business-travel-forecast-press-release/
The untold story of rate misuse | 98% of hoteliers lose revenue to rate leakage
https://www.bcdtravel.com/move-be/hotel-leakage-on-the-rise/
https://www.mycwt.com/insights/halving-hotel-room-leakage-among-travelers-in-5-months/
https://www.hospitality.today/article/direct-hotel-channels-lose-corporate-share-to-gdss
https://www.d-edge.com/gds-trends-insights/https://www.premiereadvisorygroup.com/how-to-build-a-strong-gds-strategy
https://www.premiereadvisorygroup.com/rfp-season-setting-yourself-up-for-a-successful-2025
https://investors.amexglobalbusinesstravel.com/investors/news/news-details/2025/Amex-GBT-Completes-Acquisition-of-CWT/default.aspx
https://www.businesstravelnewseurope.com/Management/American-Express-GBT-completes-540m-CWT-acquisition
https://www.altexsoft.com/blog/corporate-online-booking-tools-obt/https://navan.com/blog/bleisure-travel-statistics
https://navan.com/blog/how-bleisure-is-changing-the-travel-industry
https://hoteltechreport.com/news/bleisure-statistics
https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/bleisure-travel-market-112349
https://www.xotels.com/en/revenue-management/dynamic-pricing-hotels
https://www.xotels.com/en/marketing/5-step-plan-to-successfully-target-the-bleisure-marke
thttps://rfp.readybid.net/blog/inside-the-numbers-2024-hotel-rate-trends-and-what-they-mean-for-2025-negotiations
https://rfp.readybid.net/blog/hotel-rfp-technology-in-2025-how-automation-is-redefining-corporate-travel-procurement
https://rfp.readybid.net/blog/inside-the-2025-hotel-rate-negotiation-season-data-benchmarks-and-surprises
https://rfp.readybid.net/blog/2025-travel-procurement-benchmarks-how-your-hotel-rfp-strategy-stacks-up
https://us.travelctm.com/blog/hotel-rfp-corporate-accommodation-program/
https://www.businesstravelnewseurope.com/Spotlight-Series/Accommodation-2024/Sourcing
https://meetingpackage.com/blog/90-of-hoteliers-say-the-group-booking-process-is-broken
https://reedmackay.com/us/bleisure-travel-policies-everything-you-need-to-know
https://thehotelblueprint.com/business-travel-industry-in-2025-trends-and-shifts/
https://www.madrona.com/transforming-corporate-travel/
https://www.businesstravelnews.com/State-of-the-Industry/2025/Part-5-Travel-Management-Company-Relationships-and-Revolution