Accenture Corporate Rate at Starwood Hotels (Westin, St. Regis, Sheraton, Four Points, W hotels)

Starwood is one of my preferred hotel chains. They have many different brands including the most common Westin and Sheraton, the higher-end St. Regis, the fashionable W hotels and the cost effective Four Points. The quality is pretty high everywhere. I love W hotels but I most often stay at Westin because they are typically next to my clients locations.

I have been travelling at Starwood Hotels for different companies, using different hotel rates and code but, based on my experience, Accenture has an amazing global agreement with Starwood.

With Starwood hotels corporate codes are called SET codes and the SET codes can be filled in on the booking form on-line.

Accenture is a large consultancy mainly focused on Information Technology and strategy-related projects. Accenture employs more than 300,000 people around the globe and the company has revenues in excess of US$30 billions.

Accenture corporate code (SET code) at Starwood hotels is 57464. 

The same code works for all Starwood properties including Westin, St. Regis, W hotels, Sheraton, Four Points, Le Meridien, Aloft, etc.

I have noticed that in some Westin properties, IBM is able to get a better rate and at some W hotels Oracle get better rate than Accenture. However, overall Accenture has been able to negotiate good discounts across the board at all Starwood hotels both in the US and in Europe. For example when I travelled for a meeting with Accenture in Milan, Italy, I stayed at the Westin and the Accenture rate was absolutely incredible for such an upscale property (I strongly recommend you visit the rooftop terrance). So if you are working for Accenture, booking using the Accenture SET code will guarantee you a nice room at a great price.

 

I realised that many Accenture employees do not know their SET code.  Actually the code was not given to me by Accenture or by an Accenture employee. I found Accenture SET code on-line on the Flyertalk forum (www.flyertalk.com). I typically use the Accenture code when my trip is related to some business I do with Accenture. However, I have never been asked for any identification at the hotel check-in.

Another Starwood properties I really like and that I strongly recommend are the following ones:

- The W Lakeshore Hotel in Chicago. Great view right on Lake Michigan. I also stayed at the other W in Downtown Chicago but the Lakeshore one is much nicer with its lake-front location.

- The Westin Resort on the Sunset Key Island in Front of Key West. An amazing resort in an incredible Caribbean location that I strongly recommend.

How to find corporate codes to get hotel corporate rates?

There are two ways to book a room enjoying a corporate rate: calling the hotel and asking for the rate or booking on the hotel website using the corporate or contract code. Calling the hotel is not always successful because sometimes the reservation agent of the hotel will ask for an email from a corporate email account in order to confirm the booking. Therefore in case you are eligible for the rate as a contractor, supplier or customer but you are not an actual employee, you will not be able to complete the booking. The solution is to ask your contact at your client or supplier to book the room for you.

The more convenient way to book the room is using the corporate code and going directly to the hotel website providing the code during the reservation. There is usually a field called "Corporate Code", or "Corporate Contract" or "Discount Code". The issue is clearly getting access to the corporate code because very often not even employees know the corporate discount code to get access to the discounts. It is typically a information in the hands of the travel department. However, once you know that you are eligible for a discount as an employee, contractor, supplier or client, you can just search for the corporate code on-line on Google.  There are many forums on-line where these codes are typically shared by people and Google will bring you right there. For example, if I am going to visit XYZ Corporation and therefore I expect to be eligible to use their corporate rates, I search on-line “XYZ Corporation hotel corporate rate code”, or “XYZ corporate rate HOTEL_NAME” where HOTEL_NAME is the hotel or the chain I’d like to stay at. One of the best forum to find the codes is Flyertalk (www.flyertalk.com). However, codes are easier to be found with Google that browsing the forum manually.

Clearly large corporate and large hotel chains are the best candidates to find codes. I would not waste my time if I were visiting a customer who was a mid-sized corporation. Very unlikely mid-sized companies have chain-wide agreement with hotel chains. Because my career is in technology I typically visit companies such as Intel, Google, HP, Microsoft, Siemens, IBM, Oracle, Accenture, Dell, General Electric (GE), Honeywell or Cisco. All these large corporations are very good negotiators of corporate rates and they typically have deals with most of the largest chains such as Hilton, Starwood (Westin, Sheraton, Four Points, W), Club Carlson (Radisson, Park Plaza), Marriott and Hyatt.

Do you need a corporate ID in order to use a hotel corporate rate?

On-line I often have read about people concerned by using a corporate rate because they feel the hotel will be asking for identification at check-in in order to confirm eligibility for the discounted corporate rate. I found many people asking these sorts of questions and many other people replying on on-line forums that an ID is required in order to use a corporate rate. However, my experience is very different and I believe it is purely an ethical issue in cases you are not eligible to use a specific rate. Nobody would most likely ever catch you (neither anybody is motivated to catch you). On the other hand, it is a matter of what ethical standard you aim at in your personal and professional life.

In my career I have been enjoying corporate rates at hotel in many different capacities: sometimes I was an actual employee of the company that negotiated the discounted rate and therefore I had a business card and other form of identifications. However, most of the time in my career I have been using corporate rates as a consultant, contractor, supplier or customer of the company who was holding the contract with the hotel chain. Therefore, I had no form of identification and sometime the details of my relationship with the company who booked the room for me was confidential in nature. In any case the details are never the business of the receptionist at the hotel.

Typically I am asked for a form of corporate identification less than 10% of the times I have a reservation using a corporate rate. When I am actual employee I typically show my business card but when I am a contractor or supplier I just say so. No further details are needed. Typically my answer to a request of corporate ID to prove my relationship with the company holding the contract with the hotel chain sounds like “Sorry, I am a contractor/supplier/customer”. Not a single time I was asked any additional question or challenged further.

The truth is that the hotel chain itself has no interest in investigating eligibility because their business and profitability is all about occupancy. Their number one goal is fill the property in. It is the old pricing game. Let’s make an example. If we are talking about an hotel that charges a rack rate of $300 per night, they would be happy to sell rooms at $150 to fill in their property as long as their guest paying $300 per night do not get to know that.  For this reasons website like Hotwire are successful. Hotwire allows hotels to sell rooms with a heavy discount and raise their occupancy without loosing margin with the price-insensitive customers willing to pay the rack rate anyway to stay at that specific place. Therefore for the same reason they are very glad to accept guests who booked with a discounted rate through a corporate deal. Moreover, corporate guests book directly with the hotel, either by phone or on the hotel website and therefore the hotel is able to save the commissions they typically pay to travel websites such as Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity, Booking.com or any other. Commissions are very expensive, typically in the 15-25% range. Therefore providing a similar discount for a corporate client makes total business sense for the hotel chain.

The only scenario when an hotel is not happy about having guest booking with a corporate discounted rate is when they are pretty much positive that the entire hotel will be fully booked anyhow, for example in certain locations during holidays or during large conventions. You will be able to tell that immediately from the hotel website because the website will not accept the corporate code and you will be only left with the rack rate.

So should you worry about being kicked out of the hotel? Not based on my pretty extensive experience. Am I suggesting you to use corporate rates you are not eligible for? Not at all but purely because I do not feel it is ethical. However, I would suggest that you understand if you are eligible to take advantage of corporate rates because very often you do not need to be an employee of the company holding the contract with the hotel. Contractors, consultant, suppliers and customers are very often eligible as well.

How Corporate Rates at hotels work

Most of travellers who work for large corporations are used to enjoyed extremely discounted rates at the largest hotel chains around the globe. Discount vary significantly depending the the chain, the specific property, the period of the year and the contract with the corporation. Typically discounted corporate rates go from a 10% discount to a 70% discount. Sometimes having access to the corporate contract at an hotel chain does not only give you access to a highly discounted rate but often to other benefits as well, such as free internet connection, room upgrade, free breakfast, access to the hotel business lounge, or late check-out. Moreover, the other major benefits of corporate rates over other types of promotions have to do with the cancellation policy: typically corporate rates can be cancelled by 6 pm of the check-in date with no penalties (other times there is a longer cancellation notice but it's quite reasonable). On the other hand, if you want to get a decent rate at an hotel and you are not entitled to a corporate rate, you will be left with advance payment rates, typically that do not provide any refund in case of cancellation.

Large corporation are very good at negotiating fantastic corporate rates that typically are chain-wide: this means that any hotel of that specific chain will provide you a certain level of discount, although the level of discount may vary from property to property. Because the discount are deep and based on how many room are sold each year using a specific corporate code, large corporation who have these contracts in place push all their employees, suppliers, contractors and consultants to use those corporate codes. The more rooms are sold on the corporate code, the better discount the travel team of the corporation will be able to negotiate for the following year. Typically corporate rates can also be used by employees for personal trips and vacation (as long the the bills are not expensed or charged to the company) and in some cases family members have access to the same rates.

For hotel chains, providing deep discounts to corporations allow the hotel chain to have higher occupancy rates and to have many people who book rooms directly with the hotel (or using the hotel website) rather than using website such as Expedia, Orbitz or Booking.com that charge to the hotel very high commissions. Corporate rates are not available through most of the booking websites and you are forced to use the hotel website applying to corporate code in the reservation search form. This is not a detail for the hotel, because they push you to their own website and aways from travel websites that charge them commissions from 10% to 25% on every booking made. Therefore, at the end of the day, everybody gets a pretty nice deal: you get a low rate, the corporation get another nigh sold using their corporate code and therefore a nice discount next year, and the hotel saves money because you book directly on their website. Moreover, if it's the corporation itself paying directly or indirectly for your stay, the corporation owning the corporate contract with the hotel chain enjoys the saving as well as your employer, client or supplier.

As a corporate traveller and experienced negotiator of corporate deals, I always suggest to my friends and colleagues to be fully aware of the corporate rates they might have access to as employees, consultants, contractors, customers or suppliers of large corporations. The benefits are great for everybody and people should not be shy at taking advantage of the opportunity.

This blog is about corporate travel and teaches people how to get access to corporate discounts for hotels they might be entitled to but not aware of. I met many employees and clients of large corporations who are entitled to fantastic hotel rates but do not use them because they do not even know that they exist or they do not have access to the corporate codes to access the rates.

Safe travel!