As the 2024 hotel RFP season gets underway, corporate travel buyers are grappling with a number of internal and external uncertainties. Many are rightsizing their programs, a process that is reshaping their partnerships with hotel suppliers, and considering new hotel pricing structures.

As demand for meetings and events picks up in an economic environment characterized by steep price increases, meeting planners are rising to the challenge by applying a combination of skill, strategy and, most important of all, creative out-of-the-box thinking. 

It will be another challenging year ahead for corporate travel—meetings are back, but so are high prices. As corporations juggle their sustainability goals with duty of care and rising budgets, they seek better tools to make smart decisions. But learning to trust and understand the data must come first.

As business travel regains its footing in response to changing corporate needs and shifting travel patterns, new strategies and diverse approaches to hotel sourcing are emerging.  

As meeting volume continues to pick up steam in 2022, planners are managing organizational expectations and budgets while navigating in a new landscape defined by a return of in-person events, changing attendee expectations, steep cost increases, compressed lead times on RFPs, staffing shortages, and limits on hotel and venue availability. Increasingly, many are finding that they must reevaluate their old processes to be successful.

Just as some leading corporations began rolling out new approaches and technologies to more quickly and conveniently source and book simple meetings, the world of meetings took a long pause. As meetings resume, pressure is mounting for more efficient and expedient ways to book such meetings.

The shift to remote and hybrid work models has prompted companies to rethink travel policies and payment strategies
with a digital-first mindset.

Virtual cards are emerging as one of many digital payment solutions gaining traction in his new working environment, with virtual card transactions expected to grow 340 percent in the next five years; increasing from 8 billion in 2022 to more than 121 billion in 2027, according to a September 2022 report by analyst firm Juniper Research.