How to get bookings from companies and travel agents

• Companies: offices, factories, hospitals and colleges near you whose staff and visitors need rooms, booked by an admin team or a travel desk.
• The travel companies and booking tools that companies use to book their staff's trips.
• Travel agents in the cities your guests come from, who book holidays for families and couples.
• Tour operators, in India and abroad, who sell trips with a hotel in each town.
• Wholesalers, who sell hotel rooms to travel agents in bulk.

• A company: one agreed price for the year with breakfast and wifi in it, rooms when its people need them, an invoice in its name with its GST number, and a named person to call.
• A travel agent: a price it can sell on at a margin of its own, or a commission on your price, and a confirmation the same day.
• A tour operator: prices for next season months ahead, rooms held for its trips until a set date, and clear terms for cancelling.
• All of them: answers in hours, not days, and the agreed price honoured every time.

1. 1List the companies within a short drive: business parks, factories, hospitals, colleges and government offices. Ask each who books its visitors' rooms.
2. 2Look through your past guests for company names on invoices and in email addresses. A company that already sends you guests is the easiest to sign.
3. 3Note the cities most of your guests come from, and find travel agents there who sell trips to your area.
4. 4Ask each company which travel company or booking tool its staff book through. Your hotel needs to be in that tool for its staff to choose you.

• One price for each kind of room, with what it includes, for a year, and the dates it doesn't apply, such as festivals and the big events in your town.
• The cancellation terms, and how they pay: by card, or on invoice within an agreed time.
• For agents and operators, a price that is never shown to the public, so that they can sell on at a margin without your own website undercutting them.
• A named person, and a phone number that is answered.

A first email should take a minute to read: who you are, how far you are from their office or their guests' plans, what you offer them, and who to reply to. Send it to a named person, follow up once a week later, and visit the ones nearby.

A price made for agents or wholesalers sometimes reaches a public booking site, below your own website's price. Agree in writing that it is never to be shown to the public, give each partner a price under a code of its own so that you can tell where a leak came from, and check the booking sites for your hotel every week (see the guide on checking your price on every booking site).

Keep a list of every company and agent you have agreed a price with, and count each one's room nights every month. Renew the price each year with the ones that send you guests, and ask the quiet ones what would help.