This booking startup is looking to lower risk for even planners

Event planners are liable for the cost of the rooms even if they aren't filled, when booking room blocks.

It has gotten so bad that group booking overall is on the decline, and has been for nearly a year. Planners, reluctant to face an ever-growing risk and slashed commission payments, are looking at other options to house attendees, but often the solutions are not adequate, especially for larger events. Stayker, a hotel booking platform, aims to reduce this risk for planners, matching attendees up with available hotels and circumventing much of the back-and-forth required in booking and negotiating rooms.

“I’ve done a lot of hotel contracting in the past and the biggest pain point is attrition and honestly the commission cuts — that’s the big elephant in the room nobody’s talking about.”

— Talley Richey, Vice President and Co-Founder at Stayker

Attrition refers to the penalties hotels will often contract planners to pay if a certain percentage of the room block is not filled.

Richey and fellow Co-Founder Amy Barker have been working in the hospitality business for over 30 years, and have seen many of these problems first-hand. The startup, which is based out of Charlotte, North Carolina, connects planners to a network of hotels with available rooms and gives them a commission cut afterwards, aiming to add an element of security to what is quickly starting to feel like a high-stakes gamble.

Commission payments have dropped for planners over the past year, opening them up to further financial risk. In February, Marriott slashed third-party planner commissions from 10 percent to 7 percent, and Hilton, Hyatt, and Intercontinental Hotel Group soon followed suit, leading some independent planners to question their ability to stay in business.

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