Rewards of loyalty

Dedicated executive floors, specially designed bedrooms, free laundry, extra pillows - glance at the litany of goodies offered by hotels to business travellers and it is patently obvious whom the hotel industry votes its top customer.

Corporate executives on the road who clock up hundreds of bed nights in the line of duty provide the bread-and-butter business for most hotels, but the competition for their custom is fierce. As even the big brand-name hotel groups will acknowledge, securing loyalty from business travellers is remarkably difficult.

Just as most well-travelled executives will have signed up to one or more airlines' frequent-flier programmes to collect air miles or points, they also carry a wallet full of frequent-stay cards from a variety of hotel groups. They may choose to stay at the Hilton National when in Manchester, the Forte Posthouse when in Hemel Hempstead, a Travel Inn if it's late and they are tired of driving, or a Thistle when they are in London.

On overseas trips, the mix-and-match of brands continues, depending on which country they are in. The choice of hotel on any particular occasion could be made because of the price, the location, because they specifically like something about an individual property, or purely out of habit.

In spite of the difficulties of building loyalty, hotel groups are stepping up their efforts to woo business travellers into making their bookings with them rather than a rival chain, by creating packages designed to appeal to executives.

For example in October, Holiday Hospitality, formerly known as Holiday Inn Worldwide, finished trials of a new Business Complete package specifically targeted at business travellers. It was available at the group's hotels in Sutton in Surrey, Maidenhead, Leeds and Manchester, and also at Heathrow, where it continues.

For a supplement of £39.50 on top of the rack rate or the corporate rate negotiated by the client's company, the guest received an upgrade to executive room, car parking, full English breakfast, £30-worth of telephone calls, £20-worth of fax calls, postage and photocopying, and a custom-designed "instant office" kit with stationery supplies such as diskettes and TippEx. It also included an in-room film, newspaper and magazines, premium brand toiletries, laundry for one shirt or blouse, a goodie box of sweets and games, and as much beer, wine and soft drinks as you could drink from the minibar.

Sue Wilkinson, sales development manager for Holiday Hospitality's premium Crowne Plaza brand, who was involved in the trial, says that 200 people paid the supplement for Business Complete, which was about the minimum number of packages the company had hoped to sell during the test period.

Although a review of Business Complete is still under way, Wilkinson says initial feedback suggests that people liked the fact that all the costs they were likely to incur during their stay were included in the price. "Our research shows that customers want to be able to price the room as a total package," she says, "and not have lots of individual charges for things like breakfast, telephone calls and car parking, which keep adding up so that their bill goes beyond their budget."

Holiday Hospitality is now looking at whether to launch Business Complete as an exclusive product for its mainstream Holiday Inn Worldwide or upmarket Crowne Plaza brands.

On its mid-market Posthouse brand, Forte is also going down the route of offering an Executive Package for a supplement to the normal room rate.

For an additional £20, guests will get breakfast in their bedroom or the restaurant, a business magazine, a free satellite movie, a half-bottle of wine and mineral water, two-for-one drinks voucher and a late check-out. Meanwhile, the Corporate Privilege programme offered by Forte across all its brands, including Posthouse, Le Méridien and Heritage, has been revamped for 1998 so that the corporate rate now includes breakfast.

Travelodge, Forte's budget brand, is also making its bid to attract more business travellers with its recent introduction of a Business Account card. It is targeted at executives who don't want to have to settle the bill with their own credit cards. Once the Business Account card is cleared at the Travelodge, an invoice is raised and sent directly to the guest's company.

Such initiatives to encourage business travellers to book come on top of efforts by hoteliers to market bedrooms which are specifically designed to meet the requirements of executives. Everything from extra fluffy dressing gowns to access to the Internet is now being offered to executive guests who are prepared to pay a premium for comfort.

The Hallmark bedrooms, promoted by Radisson Edwardian Hotels to the corporate market, are a typical example of what hotel groups promote as "executive" rooms. They feature a king- or queen-sized bed, a work area, air conditioning, a fax machine, two telephones, bathrobes, slippers and extra pillows.

To raise the profile of its Hallmark product, Radisson Edwardian has created a Business Class package costing from £135, available at eight central London hotels. This includes full English breakfast, complimentary newspaper, tea- and coffee-making facilities, no telecom card connection charges, in-room film, VAT recovery assistance and express check-out. Spouses can stay free, although breakfast is not included.

The Business Rooms currently being rolled out by Inter-Continental Hotels and Resorts go several steps further than simply providing a modem point for a laptop. The five-star chain will provide desks with a Hewlett Packard Office Jet Model 300 workstation, which operates as a printer, fax and copier. All rooms will have a mini stationery cupboard and ergonomically designed workchair.

Similarly, the Sheraton Smart Room recently unveiled by ITT Sheraton aims to combine a luxury bedroom with a fully functioning office. Facilities include a Gestetner 9743 fax with photocopying and printing capacity, dual-line speaker phone with integral modem jack, a high intensity, purpose-built Anglepoise lamp, and an ergonomically designed business chair with swivel and height adjustments.

In contrast to the "office in a bedroom" approach, Posthouse promises a home-from-home atmosphere in the new-style bedroom currently being installed across the 83-strong chain. Posthouse marketing controller Arnold Woodhouse believes that the trend towards giving business travellers an office they can sleep in has gone too far. He says his brief to designers charged with creating the new-look Posthouse bedroom was to create a "safe haven" atmosphere where executives won't feel they have to work, but they have all the tools they need if they wish to do so.

All the new bedrooms being equipped in the £150m revamp of Posthouse will have a second telephone and a modem socket close to the dressing table, which serves as a desk, but the centrepiece of the room is not a smart piece of hi-tech equipment. It is, rather, a comfy-looking bed with a duvet.

A cynical view of the myriad value-added packages being offered by hoteliers is taken by Mike Platt, commercial affairs director of leading business travel agency group Hogg Robinson BTI.

His company is the biggest booker of hotels in the UK and so is used to seeing these frills being offered to corporate clients as an incentive to book. But he believes that hotels are offering these added-value extras purely to justify increases in room rates.

"To my mind," Platt says, "these extras are very much appreciated by the traveller, but not much by the person who pays the bill. While some of these extras have a value, very often the person employing the business traveller would rather see the value reflected in the rate rather than in these various packages.

"Their view is: cut out all the frills, and next time give me a better rate."