Rate & Allocation Negotiation

Ensuring Last Room Availability Contracts

The first level of control used to ensure rate and capacity throughout the year to meet demand is to address Last Room Availability (LRA) contracts, which ensures that if the room type is still selling the customer’s negotiated rate should be applied.

ICOR’s system is unique in this area in that the contractual terms are copied and retained so that the customer and ICOR remain in control of the contractual terms and thus can identify any breach and address at time of booking.

Although LRA is an important control, it can result in ‘inflationary’ pressure, where customers can be paying ultimately more for an LRA agreement rate versus a lower Non Last Room Availability Agreement, and ultimately if the rooms are all sold then they are not available to the customer.

Delivering Proactive Allocation Models

ICOR places great emphasis on the allocation model. ICOR proactively looks at future trending to establish and ensure allocation meets a corporates capacity needs, i.e., long-term allocation as part of the contractual rate agreement.

General lead in time for bookings being evaluated per city, so that the allocation is set with the appropriate lead time (for instance there is no benefit of a release time of 72 hours for an allocation if all guest bookings are made 48 hours out from arrival as all the allocation would have been automatically released a day earlier).

Peak demand locations and periods are specifically addressed through advance planning and supplier engagement. This maybe a conference, exhibition or sporting event globally that we know through market intelligence will have an availability impact.

The allocation model protects customers from availability issues, whilst also protecting agreed rates from any inflationary pressure