Amadeus has drawn together insight from professionals at the coalface of booking business travel with research from the travellers themselves to produce its latest white paper.
The Hotels 360 report, carried out in conjunction with the Guild of Travel Management Companies, looks at the current landscape with a growing number of channels and the fine balance between traveller demands and business needs.
The study devotes a section to up and coming business travellers - those aged 18 to 24 - of which, 64% view face-to-face travel for business as essential compared to 53% of all travellers.
Among this younger group, 46% always go online to check out rates and book via an aggregator and are twice as likely to use these services than older groups. Only 21% of those aged 55+ say they research and book on these sites.
The digital natives also have different views on areas such as shared accommodation with 54% saying they are open to the idea while only 18% of all travellers said they would consider it.
Attitudes here are interesting given Concur's partnership with Airbnb in the summer as well as the launch of Airbnb for business.
Further insight uncovered by the Hotels 360 report shows reveals more than a third (37%) of the corporate travel community would pick hotels as the area to have complete control over if they could pick one element.
Business travellers participating in the study are mainly using corporate travel booking tools and 85% say they see the hotels they want most on these systems.
More information on hotel rates and what is included is identified as one area for improvement for hotels and travel management companies. Although 51% say they understand the hotels on the corporate travel tool have built around negotiated rates, 45% still go online for 10 minutes or more to research prices outside the in-house system.
This is perhaps less surprising when comments from the TMC community reveal that up to 30% of rates loaded may be incorrect, not necessarily on price but on what might be included.
Further areas for improvement for hotels include access to wifi across all devices and all areas of a property.
TMCs, meanwhile, could drive more value by incorporating mobile solutions with 28% saying managed travel bookings are available via smartphone. And, 5% say their employer plans to enable corporate hotel bookings on mobile in the next year.
TMCS and travel teams can also provide more value by helping travellers sift through reviews to see what's relevant to them as the research shows 38% would value reviews from the general corporate travel community and 22% would value them from colleagues.
The survey element of Hotels 360 was conducted by AudienceNet on 445 adults workng for companies with at least 250 employees who book through a TMC or in-house travel team.
Amadeus also includes insight from Business Travel Lets Get Personal research published in February in compiling this latest report which is available to download here.
NB: Corporate travel image via Shutterstock.