Last year, they filled up their rooms 58.5 percent of the time. Yet they break even with a 41 percent rate. The most profitable of all are hotels that don't serve food and beverages at all but manage to get midscale rates. They start making money when they fill up 49 percent of their rooms, and last year their occupancy rate was 67 percent. Which means that corporate travel managers who keep good records about where and when their employees stay ought to be able to shake out some cheaper rates in the next couple of years from lower priced hotels.
Travel agents have an explanation of the current hold-down on fares.
They say it's all a response by the airlines to government pressure. The Department of Transportation is looking at competition between traditional airlines and their low-fare competitors. There are all sorts of proposals floating around to force existing airlines to not compete so hard against new entrant airlines with generally lower fares.