BUSINESSES could be wasting more than £250,000 a year by not shopping around for the best deals on hotel rooms for their corporate travellers.

That figure was revealed by a survey carried out by business advisors KPMG.

Its latest Hotel Distribution Survey 2003 found that only 27 per cent of hotels offered the same price for a room regardless of the method of booking, whether that was by the hotel website, calling a hotel direct, or calling central reservations. That compares with 45 per cent of hotels in last year's survey.

Failure to spot and exploit these price differences across different booking channels means businesses are missing out on potentially huge savings on business travel.

Room-rate discrepancies varied on average by £12, and by as much as £47.

Rob Bailey of KPMG's tourism team, said: "There may be several reasons for the lack of pricing integrity. Hotels may be deliberately differentiating prices for tactical promotional purposes.

"An alternative view is that hotels have not developed a pricing strategy or, if they have, they are not managing them effectively."