In the new seller's market, will planners have to start paying for meeting space?

According to Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide President and COO Bob Cotter, if they want rock-bottom guest room pricing, they just might.

Cotter emphasized that Starwood intends to continue to be a strong partner to planners, even as the hotel market shifts to a seller's market, which has not been the case in the past four years.

It won't be an easy partnership.

Not only will the expected seller's market be exacerbated by limited supply, because new hotel construction ground to a halt during the recession, but also because Internet transient pricing has changed the playing field, said Cotter.

“We have to talk together about why a transient price can be lower than a group rate,” Cotter said, “and how we can set appropriate rate expectations.

“We're coming into a radically different environment, and there's a lot of misinformation,” he said. “It seems to me that the most important thing to be talking about is the way we talk to each other.”