Long-term hotel relationships key to success

Corporate event planners need to build long-term relationships with hotels in order to negotiate preferable rates, according to one hotelier.

Ahmed Baki, regional director of sales and marketing, Middle East, Starwood said that given the amount of business coming in, only corporations that were prepared to build up a long-term working relationship with hotels would benefit.

"It goes back to account management and building a trusting relationship with your accounts," said Baki.

"We try to think long-term as much as we can; everybody will tell you the same but not everybody is doing it. Everyone wants to milk everybody to get the best out of them."

Baki admitted that hotels were still comfortable in the knowledge that demand still outstrips supply, which means that hotels only tend to offer attractive rates to long-term business partners.

 

"Today we are sitting in the driving seat but it is not going to be like that five years down the line," he said.

"I think with corporate planners we should not talk about one-shot business, we should be talking about partnerships; two-way, win/win partnerships for longer periods of time."

The next step to building successful two-way relationships was creating awareness among corporate planners and hotel sales staff about the current accommodation situation in the region and what to expect when more hotels come online.

"We need to talk about longer strategies in terms of a long time frame. I think about it and I try to educate my teams about it as well," he added.

"We try as much as we can to get our sales staff's feet on the ground and get them to think a little bit further down the road to the time when we have another 40 hotels online in the market."