How Nielsen turned a reactive hotel program into a real-time, data-driven advantage
Nielsen used real-time room-night visibility to pinpoint where travelers were already staying, then turned that live demand into faster, more strategic negotiations—without adding manual workload for a lean team. Along the way, Christopherson helped expand chainwide coverage, correct hidden international rate-loading errors, and strengthen total-cost compliance so negotiated rates actually displayed, booked, and delivered value.
February 10, 2026
By combining real-time booking data with insights from SAP Concur, Motor City Travel and its technology partner Christopherson empowered Nielsen to shift from guesswork to targeted negotiations, fix hidden rate-loading issues, and start adding the right hotels where travelers actually stay.
Key outcomes:
Real-time visibility: Real-time view of room nights by location surfaces true volume and highlights where travelers already stay.
Targeted preferred expansion: Strategic additions to the preferred list based on actual traveler behavior.
Rate-loading audit & fixes: Auditing exposed—and fixed—international rate-loading issues to ensure negotiated rates display and book correctly.
Early adoption & rate assurance: Early adoption and savings tied to negotiated codes, with stronger rate assurance and higher hotel attachment.
Background and goals
As a global leader in audience insights, data and analytics, Nielsen’s travel footprint is complex. Membership reps, service technicians, sales and marketing teams, and executives travel year-round for customer meetings, internal budget sessions, and new-office openings across the U.S., Europe, and India. That variability meant the hotel program needed to spot emerging volume quickly, negotiate targeted rates, and guide travelers toward preferred properties—without burying a small team in manual analysis.
As Nielsen’s global travel manager, Emily Pickell explained: “Before, it was very hard to get any understanding of volume.”
City-by-city demand shifted faster than year-end spreadsheets could track, so the aim with the hotel program was to replace rear-view-mirror sourcing with real-time intelligence and expert execution.
Challenges
Prior to the program, sourcing was largely reactive and vendor-driven. Pickell fielded offers from individual brands and renewed what she could, but true demand was obscured by “data leakage” when employees booked off-channel. Without timely, reliable room-night counts by market, it was hard to justify new negotiations mid-year—or to know which hotels should even make the preferred list.
Auditing was another gap.
“I have not been auditing,” Pickell noted, pointing to missing checks on rate loading and on total-cost items such as cancellation policies, inclusions (e.g., breakfast, Wi-Fi), and resort or destination fees that can quietly erase a “good” nightly rate.
The solution: Real-time visibility and expert sourcing
Christopherson connected Nielsen’s SAP Concur data stream to its hotel sourcing workflow, giving Emily line-of-sight to actual room nights as they occurred—by property and market. That feed quickly surfaced true-volume locations and specific hotels where travelers were already staying. Emily and the team then added hotels strategically in cities like Charlotte, Tampa, and New York City, aligning the program to where employees were on the ground.
“We’re catching things as they’re happening, rather than discovering missed opportunities a year later,” Pickell explained.
Equally important was the blend of technology and hands-on service. Pickell credits the supplier relations team for pushing negotiations beyond nightly rate alone—scrutinizing cancellation windows, inclusions, and especially resort fees in high-cost markets like New York.
“Resort fees are massive,” she explained.
With targeted RFPs and better contacts at key properties, the program also expanded beyond one or two brand relationships to chainwide agreements with multiple groups, broadening traveler choice while consolidating leverage.
The newfound discipline extended globally. As new hotels were added, Pickell uncovered international rate-loading errors that would have stayed hidden without the program’s audit trail. Fixing those issues ensured negotiated content flowed consistently—benefiting not only U.S. travelers but colleagues flying in from India and other regions who could now access Nielsen’s domestic rates on U.S. trips.
“It’s been very educational, extremely helpful,” she said.
Results and impact
Although the hotel program launched recently, the early signals are strong. Internal reporting during the interview window showed heavy adoption of negotiated Nielsen rate access codes and high usage at sourced properties—evidence that travelers will choose well-matched hotels when presented in-channel.
Beyond the dollars, the negotiating position improved. With real-time visibility, the team could show properties that Nielsen travelers were “in-house right now,” converting in-market stays into leverage for immediate rate discussions or added value. And because the program explicitly checks cancellation terms, breakfast/Wi-Fi inclusions, and fee waivers, it practices rate assurance—verifying that the booked, total cost aligns with negotiated expectations, not just the nightly rate displayed at booking. That discipline boosts traveler satisfaction and supports hotel attachment (the share of trips that include a preferred hotel), even without setting aggressive mandates.
“Having the supplier relations team as my intermediary has been absolutely game changing,” Pickell said. “They know which levers to pull, when to escalate, and how to persist past generic follow-ups to land concrete answers.”
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