Hotel room rates projected to rise during 2012-13

Hotel room rates may jump back to pre-crisis levels sometime during 2012 to 2013 as companies start to ramp up their travel budgets, the head of private travel and hospitality company said.

"Fundamentally, in order to grow businesses you need to travel, you need face-to-face contact," Carlson Chief Executive Hubert Joly said at the Reuters Travel and Leisure Summit.

Companies pared back their travel spending last year as global economic activity slowed and unemployment grew. Hotel room rates tumbled nearly nine per cent in 2009, the worst year for the hotel industry since the Great Depression.

The downturn has forced some firms to make permanent changes in the way they book travel, Joly said.

But other companies are likely to revert to previous levels of spending.

"Try investment bankers and tell them on a permanent basis that they're going to be in the back of the plane – they're not going to do deals," said Joly.

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