There are two ways to book a room at the corporate rate: call the hotel, use the corporate code or contract code to check the rate on the hotel website or make a reservation. Calling the hotel is not always successful because sometimes the hotel reservationist will request an email from the company’s email account to confirm the reservation. Therefore, if you are eligible for the rate as a contractor, vendor or customer, but you are not an actual employee, you will not be able to complete the reservation. The solution is to ask your client or supplier’s contact to book the room for you.
A more convenient way to book a room is to use your company code and visit the hotel website that provides the code directly during the booking. There is usually a field called “Company Code”, “Company Contract” or “Discount Code”. The problem is obviously getting the company code, as very often even the staff do not know the company discount code for the discount. This is usually the information held by the travel department. However, once you know that you are eligible for a discount as an employee, contractor, supplier or customer, you can Google for the company code. There are many forums online where these codes are usually shared by people and Google will take you there. For example, if I wanted to visit Company XYZ and therefore I wanted to qualify for their company rate, I would search online for “Company XYZ hotel company rate code” or “Company XYZ rate hotel_NAME”, where hotel _NAME is the hotel or chain I want to stay at. One of the best sites to find codes is Hotel Company Codes. However, codes are easier to find by browsing the forum through Google Mobile.
Obviously, large companies and large hotel chains are the best people to look for codes. If I were to visit a client of a medium-sized company, I would not waste my time. It is highly unlikely that a medium-sized company would have a chain agreement with a hotel chain. Because my profession is technology, I usually visit companies like Intel, Google, HP, Microsoft, Siemens, IBM, Oracle, Accenture, Dell, General Electric, Honeywell or Cisco. All of these large companies are great corporate rate negotiators and they usually have deals with most of the largest hotel chains such as Hilton, Starwood (Westin, Sheraton, Four Points, W), Club Carlson (Radisson, Park Plaza), Marriott and Hyatt.