Arbitrica for business: the lowest hotel prices for small and medium companies

Arbitrica for business gives every employee who books a hotel a personal AI agent that gets the company the lowest price in the world for that hotel. At the checkout, on whatever site the employee is booking, the agent searches the same hotel from 195 countries, checks that it is identical with all taxes and fees included, and prepares the booking at the lowest price. The employee reviews it and completes the payment as usual. After booking, Arbitrica keeps searching until the free cancellation window ends. It is built for small and medium companies whose people travel to meet clients, visit sites and work trade shows, and for the travel managers and procurement managers who answer for that spend.

Who Arbitrica for business is for

• Travel managers who run travel without a travel management company (TMC), or with a light one, and need hotel spend down without moving people to worse hotels.
• Procurement managers who see hotels as a category with no negotiated price, dozens of buyers and no easy way to show value for money.
• Operations and office managers who book trips for colleagues and for trade show teams.
• Founders and finance leads at companies where everyone books their own hotel on Booking, Expedia or the hotel website and puts it on expenses.

Why small and medium companies overpay for hotels

Large companies negotiate annual hotel rates and audit them. Most small and medium companies do not have the volume for that, so they pay whatever the public price is on the day someone books.

Public prices, searched from one country

Employees search from their own country, on one or two sites, and book. Different countries get access to different inventory, sales channels, local rates and promotions, so the same hotel is often 5-30% cheaper when searched from somewhere else. In a test of 1,000 hotels searched from 100 countries, 80% of countries showed a lower price than the traveler’s own country, and the typical gap was 20-40%.

Booked once, never checked again

Hotel prices keep moving after a booking is made. A refundable booking made three weeks out can often be rebooked for less a week later, but nobody on a small team has time to keep checking. When a lower price does appear, it often has to be taken at once, or someone else takes it.

Trade show and conference weeks

Hotels near a venue raise prices for the dates of a big event, and teams tend to book late, after the event block has sold out. For many companies these are the most expensive hotel nights of the year. Our guide to trade show hotel prices covers why and what to do about it.

Nobody owns the number

Hotel nights are spread across expense reports and company cards. Procurement sees the total once a quarter, long after anything could have been done about a single booking.

How Arbitrica works for a team

1. The employee books as usualOn the site they normally use, for the hotel and dates the trip needs.
2. The agent shows up at the checkoutArbitrica’s agent opens a chat next to the checkout, reads the price and confirms the hotel, dates, guests, room type, cancellation terms and breakfast.
3. It searches from 195 countriesIt finds the lowest price in the world for the same hotel and validates it: identical hotel, all taxes and fees included, and a price that will not change at payment.
4. It prepares everythingThe booking at that price opens in a new tab. The employee reviews it and completes the payment with the card they would have used anyway.
5. It keeps going after bookingWith a refundable booking, Arbitrica keeps searching from 195 countries until the cancellation window ends. When the same hotel drops in price, it prepares a rebooking. The new booking is confirmed first, and only then is the original cancelled.

The confirmation comes from the seller that offered the lowest price, like any other hotel booking, so it goes into the expense report the usual way. See how Arbitrica works for the full flow.

What changes for the company, and what does not

For procurement managers

Hotels are a hard category to buy well: no single supplier, prices that change every day and bookings made by dozens of people. Arbitrica does not ask you to sign a hotel contract or move bookings into a new channel. It works where the money is spent, on each booking, and shows the employee the price they were given next to the lowest price in the world, so the saving on every booking is visible at the moment it is made.

Four questions worth asking about any hotel savings approach, and how Arbitrica answers them:

• Is it the identical hotel, room and terms? Arbitrica validates the hotel, dates, guests, room type, cancellation terms and breakfast before it shows a price.
• Are the totals comparable? Prices are compared with all taxes and fees included.
• Can a traveler be left without a room? No. In a rebooking the new booking is confirmed before the original is cancelled.
• What happens to data? Arbitrica reads checkout pages only to find a lower price and does not sell personal data to third parties. See the privacy policy.

What Arbitrica can earn a company

An illustrative example: a company where 25 people travel, each spending 20 nights a year in hotels at an average of $180 a night. That is 500 hotel nights and $90,000 a year. At 5% below the price employees would have paid, Arbitrica earns the company $4,500 a year. At 15%, it earns $13,500.

Research demonstrated an average of $47 per hotel booking with Arbitrica, and up to $3,000 a year for one person. In one real search, a hotel offered on Booking at $1,527.39 was found for $1,180.27, earning the traveler $347.12 (23%).

Trade shows and conferences

Event weeks are where a team’s hotel bill is highest and where a lower price is worth the most. A few rules help any team:

• Book a refundable rate as soon as the dates are fixed, then keep checking before the cancellation deadline, which is often set in the hotel’s local time.
• Compare the event block with the public price for the same hotel. The block is not always lower.
• Check the same hotel from other countries, not just other sites.
• Keep everyone in the same hotel if that matters for the team; a lower price for the same hotel is the goal, not a different hotel.

Arbitrica does the searching for each person on the team, at checkout and after booking. For larger travel programs, see how to reduce corporate hotel spend, business travel hotel savings and cutting business travel costs.

Talk to us

Tell us how your team books hotels today, how many people travel and which events you go to: team@arbitrica.com.