Corporate rate: the price you agree with a company for its staff
A corporate rate is a room price a hotel agrees with one company for its staff and visitors, usually for a year, often with breakfast and wifi included and an invoice in the company's name. It is lower than the public price, or has more in it, in return for the company sending its people to you. Only that company's bookings get it, and the agreement says on which nights it applies and on what terms.
Also called: corporate hotel rate, negotiated rate, company rate, corporate tariff, LRA rate, corporate RFP.
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What a corporate rate is
Companies near you, and companies whose people visit your town, need rooms often: for staff on work trips, visiting clients, auditors, engineers and trainees. Rather than pay each night's public price, the company's admin or travel team agrees one price with a few hotels and books those first.
- A fixed rate: one price for each room type for the year, whatever your public price that night.
- A dynamic rate: a set share off your public flexible rate each night, so it rises and falls with your prices.
- A volume rate: a lower price for a company that sends more room nights, reviewed each year against what it really sent.
- A rate through a travel management company: agreed with the firm that books travel for many companies, and loaded in the global distribution systems for its agents and its booking tool.
What was spent on business travel in India in 2024, as GBTA, the association of business travel managers, gives it, with growth of 15.5% expected in 2025.
How corporate rates are agreed
- 1The company, or the travel management company acting for it, sends a request for proposal (RFP), usually once a year. D-EDGE describes the RFP as the yearly negotiation of corporate and consortia rates between hotels and travel management companies or companies.
- 2You answer with a rate for each room type, what is in it (breakfast, wifi, an airport pick-up, laundry), the blackout dates and the cancellation policy.
- 3The company chooses a few hotels in each town for its list of approved hotels, and tells its staff to book them.
- 4The rate is loaded where its people book: with your reservations team under a company code, on your booking engine, or in the global distribution systems under the travel management company's rate code.
- 5At the year's end, compare the room nights the company sent with what it said it would, and agree next year's rate.
The share of 157 company travel managers in India whose company uses a self-service online booking tool, in GBTA and Visa's survey between 22 September and 17 October 2025. A rate the company's booking tool doesn't show may never reach its staff.
What to put in writing
- The rate for each room type and occupancy, and whether it includes breakfast and tax.
- Whether it is a fixed rate or a share off your public rate, and the dates it runs between.
- Last room availability or not. D-EDGE explains that with last room availability the company can book the rate as long as a room is left, while without it a hotel can close the rate on busy nights and charge more.
- Blackout dates: the festivals, fairs and events in your town when the rate doesn't apply.
- The cancellation and no-show terms, such as free cancellation until a set hour on the day before arrival.
- How bookings are made: who may book, with which code, and how you know the guest is from the company.
- How it is paid: by the guest at check-out, by the company against an invoice within an agreed number of days, or on a company card, with the company's name and GST number for the invoice.
- The room nights the company expects to send, and what happens to the rate if it sends far fewer.
The smallest discount off a hotel's flexible public rate that American Express GBT's hotel programme asks for in 2026, as D-EDGE's guide lists it, beside free cancellation until at most 48 hours before arrival, last room availability, wifi included and no more than 25 blackout dates.
How to set a corporate rate
Start from what the company's nights are worth to you, not from what the hotel next door offers.
- Look at which nights its people stay. Weeknights in a town where weekdays are quiet are worth a lower price; nights you sell out anyway are not.
- Count what the company sent last year from your own bookings: company names on invoices and in email addresses.
- Compare the rate with what the same booking would leave you through a booking site, after its commission.
- Prefer a share off your public rate, or a fixed rate with blackout dates, so that your busiest nights aren't sold cheaply all year.
- Put value in rather than taking price off: breakfast, wifi and a late check-out can win a company that a small cut in price would not.
A worked example: a fixed rate against a dynamic one
A 45-room business hotel in Pune agrees a rate with a company nearby that expects to send 600 room nights a year, almost all from Monday to Thursday. On those nights the hotel's public flexible rate averages ₹5,500, but on 20 nights during trade fairs it rises to ₹9,000. A fixed rate of ₹4,800 all year brings ₹28.8 lakh from 600 room nights. Yet if the company sends 4 rooms a night on the 20 fair nights, the hotel sells 80 room nights at ₹4,800 that it could have sold at ₹9,000: ₹3.36 lakh given away. A rate of 12% off the public rate gives ₹4,840 on ordinary nights and ₹7,920 on fair nights; the fixed rate with the 20 fair nights as blackout dates does much the same.
Keeping the company's business
- Honour the rate every time, on every night it applies: a guest charged more than the agreed rate soon becomes a call from the travel desk.
- Answer a booking request within hours, and confirm it in writing.
- Know who books, the travel desk or the admin team, and who signs the agreement. Visit them before next year's rate is agreed.
- Keep the rate private. A company rate that appears on a public booking site below your own website's price costs you on every guest who finds it there.
- Count each company's room nights each month, and ask the quiet ones what would help.
