Already got negotiated hotel rates? Here's how a platform helps.
By Henry Popiolek · Published 21 May 2026
Most port agencies that have direct deals with hotels they use regularly have built those relationships for good reasons. The hotel holds rooms when seafarer numbers aren't yet confirmed. They accept late amendments when a vessel's schedule shifts. They don't penalise cancellations caused by delays upstream.
The natural worry when looking at a platform like Staze is that putting these deals on it will disturb the arrangement that makes them work in the first place.
This piece is about why that doesn't happen, and what changes around those deals once they're on Staze.
Staze isn't asking you to disturb any of it. When an agency has a negotiated rate at a hotel, we upload that rate, with its terms, exclusively to your account. Same price, same cancellation policy, same flexibility, visible only to your bookers. The deal you built stays the deal you built.
What changes is what sits around it.
Invoicing stops being the bottleneck
At-hotel expenses on Staze bookings, including bookings against your direct-rate hotels, are charged to a Staze virtual credit card. We see the transactions in real time and issue your invoice within 48 hours of checkout.
That removes the hotel back office from the critical path on DA closure. For the hotels where you have direct deals this is often where it matters most, because the relationship is informal and the billing process has grown up organically over years.
Switching costs drop, and you can see the market rate
Once your direct-rate hotel is on Staze, it sits next to every other vetted seafarer hotel in the same port, with their rates and terms in the same view.
That changes two things. First, switching costs drop. If a different hotel in the port offers better value, you can shift bookings without setting up a new commercial relationship from scratch. The leverage that comes from being able to credibly move volume is something direct relationships rarely give you, because the switching cost is usually high enough that the threat isn't real.
Second, you can see the market billing rate. Most agencies have no way of knowing how their negotiated rate compares to what other hotels in the same port are actually charging. On Staze, that comparison is just there.
Direct hotel relationships only give you access to a small set of rates.
You can set a markup on top
A direct rate run offline is a fixed arrangement. You get the rate, the rebate gets applied, you bill the client.
On Staze, you can layer a markup on top of your negotiated rate and vary it by client or by port. You can pass cost savings to the principal where that matters commercially, or capture them as margin where it doesn't. The commercial decisions that are impossible to implement consistently across dozens of bilateral deals become settings you can change in one place.
