Business travel

Travelocity Business enhances hotel rate assure

Vicky Karantzavelou - 10 December 2012, 13:38

Updated program ensures business travelers receive preferred rates at time of booking, relays booking information to travel managers.

SOUTHLAKE, TEXAS – Travelocity Business (TBiz) announces the enhancement of Hotel Rate Assure, a suite of services that allows corporate travel managers to evaluate their hotel programs and identify savings. By providing pertinent data involving the availability of negotiated rates at the time of booking, these tools provide travel managers the valuable information they need to leverage during their program's hotel negotiations.

A main component of the Hotel Rate Assure program is the Hotel Shopping Rate Audit, an online audit based on the rates the traveler sees when shopping for a hotel. TBiz collaborated with strategic customer WellPoint, a national health insurer, and GetThere to enhance the online booking tool. Hotel Shopping Rate Audit looks at GDS results for all of the hotels offered and if the corporate preferred rate is not available a data point is created containing rate information for each property offered. TBiz estimates a managed program of 800 hotels will yield 20,000 data points per month. To assist clients in managing the incoming information from travelers, TBiz created a tool to parse and analyze the results provided from the data points and formulate a comprehensive audit report. The TBiz Consulting Team can then utilize the audit results and provide analysis based on the company’s preferred hotel program.  

“Being able to identify when corporate hotel rates are not offered online, based on the results of the ‘search’ vs. actual traveler ‘selection’ offers travel managers unprecedented insight into the travelers ‘online hotel experience’.

This information is extremely valuable when developing strategies around hotel LRA,” said Cindy Heston, Manager, Strategic Sourcing-Travel at WellPoint. “We finally are melding the optimization of the consumer search engines into the corporate business technology platforms.”

Yannis Karmis, president of Travelocity Business said, “The new offerings within Hotel Rate Assure enable our customers to go through the hotel RFP process fully-armed with data and an opportunity for hoteliers to positively impact reservations prior to travel. The result of the analysis maximizes savings for their business travel programs.”

TBiz Hotel Rate Assure program also includes the following audit features:

• Booked Hotel Audit – A weekly audit of hotel reservations booked above the preferred rate provides an opportunity to modify the reservation before the stay begins. Customers can choose to receive the report for their reference or have TBiz review the report and contact hotels with another chance to offer the preferred rate.
• LRA Opportunity Audit – An analysis of the top preferred hotel properties based on the company’s transactions for potential Lowest Rate Available (LRA) calculated against property’s total inventory.
• Hotel Rate Audit – A yearly appraisal to determine if the rates agreed upon during the RFP process are at that moment in time available in the GDS.

The TBiz Consulting Team is also available to take the results of these audits and manage the hotel RFP process for customers. Based on these reports, TBiz will create hotel intelligent messaging on the online booking tool for the traveler and arranger to increase conversion to a preferred property.

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