A new white paper commissioned by iSeatz, a technology company providing ancillary booking solutions, titledÊBusiness Traveler and their Demand for Ancillary Services, researched by Phocuswright, shows that business travellers are interested in purchasing more than just rooms from hotels. Hotels now follow a trend set by airlines, which were faster to adopt ancillary products into their purchase offerings, and have grown 10x to $28 billion from a decade ago for the top ten airlines.
Corporate travel represents 31% of the overall U.S. travel market, with business travellers both travelling more frequently and consuming more travel-related products, than the leisure traveller.
- Business travelers are more loyal than leisure travelers: 59% of business travelers belong to one or more hotel loyalty programs.
- The majority of business travellers (56%) are between the ages of 25-45.
- 65% of online business travellers are male. Online business travellers are also more likely to have an undergraduate degree or better level of education and a significantly higher income ($97,500 vs. $81,600 for travellers overall).
A significant proportion of business traveller respondents indicated they are interested in purchasing more than ÒcoreÓ hotel products. Younger travellers in particular, (ages 18-34), demonstrate significantly higher demand for certain ancillaries, most notably in-room entertainment, retail sundries, on-property personal and business services and club level access.
- 82% of business travellers surveyed between the ages of 18-34 would be interested in purchasing extra loyalty program points or having this included in the nightly rate.
- More than 80% of business travellers surveyed are interested in purchasing late checkout (87%) or early check-in (85%) or have this value included in the nightly rate.
In addition to detailing the Corporate traveller landscape and the interest in purchasing travel add-ons, the white paper explores the differences in travel habits of business travellers with and without corporate travel policies; bleisure travel trends; and differences in purchasing habits for business travellers by age and type of stay.
- 47% of bleisure travellers surveyed utilized midscale (3-star) hotels with 31% utilizing upscale or luxury properties (4-5 stars).
- Services that travellers would like to secure at the time of booking include high-speed Wi-Fi (41%), parking (41%), early check-in (40%), and pre-paid breakfast (37%).
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This white paper also touches on the challenges faced by hotels, through interviews with keychain executives, on why many hotels do not offer travel extras. Hotels that were interviewed cited lack of technology, information sharing, employee incentivizing, and cost of implementation as challenges to offering ancillary services to their guests.
ÒThe travel life cycle is now undergoing a phase of rapid evolution. Travel brands are looking to differentiate and de-commoditise at every point.Ó said Kenneth Purcell, CEO & Founder of iSeatz, ÒAs a travel technology partner, iSeatz knows what travellers want. We help our partners build the technology to deliver it. Our goals are to help automate and simplify the search, booking and management of myriad travel and related goods and services; to suggest innovative paths to purchase; to capture response, and to optimise users’ experiences.Ó
This whitepaper is the companion piece to Hotel Ancillaries: An Unexplored Opportunity which focused on the leisure traveler’s interest in ancillary products, and published in 2017. To view the leisure whitepaper, pleaseÊclick here.
