The lodging industry is experiencing the strongest buyer's market in 33 years with no recovery on the horizon across demand segments, industry analyst Bjorn Hanson said today in the keynote address at Business Travel News' Virtual Corporate Travel World. Hanson, an associate professor at New York University's Tisch Center, said that amid the recession, corporate negotiated rates for 2009 now are expected to increase on average in the 0.5 percent to 1 percent range, well below the inflation level. Even in New York, which had been seeing double-digit percentage year-over-year rate increases in past years, rates should increase only about 5 percent, Hanson said. Hotels also are negotiating amenities—free breakfast and fitness center usage, for example—as a package deal more so than in the past, according to Hanson.

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