ReportWire

Tag: Expert Qu0026A

  • With Corp. Demand Tepid, Sonesta Targets Specialization

    [ad_1]

    Sonesta’s Brian Macaluso discusses:

    • Corporate demand trends
    • Changes to Sonesta’s business mix
    • The state of hotel staffing

    Sonesta International Hotels in the past five years has grown exponentially, from about 80 properties in 2020 to more than 1,200 today following the acquisition of Red Lion Hotels and other realignments. The hotel company has leaned into specialized segments, developing targeted programs for small and midsize businesses, medical meetings and government travel, among others. Sonesta SVP of global sales Brian Macaluso spoke with BTN managing editor Chris Davis last month at the Global Business Travel Association convention in Denver about the company’s evolving business mix, market approach and demand outlook. Edited excerpts follow.

    BTN: It’s been a bit of a turbulent year. What’s your read right now on where everything stands in terms of business travel?

    Brian Macaluso: At Sonesta individual business travel is still a little bit slower than expected. It hasn’t returned to where everybody thought it would be. So as we look forward, we see the year projections following what STR is saying. Everybody projected it to be a little bit more of a stronger year. And right now it’s a little bit lower than where it was expected to be.

    It’s not like it’s doom and gloom, and it’s not like it’s sunshine and roses. And some cities are stronger than others. Just like [U.S. Travel at its IPW trade show in June in Chicago] talked about for the leisure travel coming into the U.S., certain countries are stronger than they’ve ever been ,and it’s counterbalancing Canada being down. And so that’s how we’re looking at it too.

    BTN: Has Sonesta’s changes over the years altered who the typical Sonesta business traveler is?

    Macaluso: Sure. Sonesta had 50 hotels and three brands four and a half years ago, and now we have 1,100 hotels across 13 brands. During the pandemic, everything was driven by nurses and  [essential workers], and corporate travel was non-existent. As we’ve continued to move forward, we’ve enhanced our ability to welcome those travelers back. 

    We see more workforce travel, we see more displaced housing travel, and we see more extended-stay travel. We added economy, extended-stay, upscale and upper-upscale hotels. Sports has been a huge segment for us, and we developed an internal certification program that each one of our hotels takes to become Sonesta Sports certified.

    Government travel has been a huge segment that has propelled us. Obviously, at the beginning of this year it was down, but we’re seeing pockets that are still supportive. State government still continues to travel, and we saw a little bit of an impact from federal government, but we’re starting to see it come back. But we take all of our hotels through [a certification] we call Government Ready. There’s certain things that a hotel has to have in order to welcome government travelers, including CAGE Codes. So while we’ve added different hotel portfolio to welcome guests, we’ve also added training for the hotels to welcome new guests.

    BTN: Does that show up at the point of booking? Can you see that certification on the site?

    Macaluso: It depends on who they’re booking with. We’re still launching the government ready program, but we work with veterans quite a bit, work with the [U.S. Department of Defense and Drug Enforcement Administration], all those entities to make sure they know that we’re available. But the good thing is that [for government business], you won’t be able to book the hotel unless you have all of these qualifications. So we’re [preparing] the hotel to be prepared to welcome government business.

    We also signed a partnership with Meeting Professionals International on its Healthcare Meeting Compliance Certificate certification. Sonesta signed a partnership where we took all of our full-service Sonesta hotels through HMCC certification training. One person at each hotel becomes certified, and they went through a four-hour training class to make the hotel venue-verified. So now all of our full-service Sonesta hotels are venue-verified. When a meeting planner goes to book a hotel, they know these hotels are ready for medical meetings.

    BTN: Are you comfortable with the business mix Sonesta now between business, leisure and group? Are you trying to shift that mix in one direction or the other?

    Macaluso: In general, everybody would like business to come directly from their website. … We’re leaning into loyalty to help drive more loyal members for us. From a business mix perspective, we’re continuing to grow and evolve, but the main focus for us is to get the customers to come directly to the Sonesta website, become Sonesta loyalty members and drive that recognition because we want a guest to come and stay once and then come and stay again.

    BTN: Some buyers prefer travelers book through travel management companies or booking tools rather than direct. Does that create tension?

    Macaluso: I wouldn’t say tension. Our “Sonesta First” philosophy focuses on doing business with our customers the way they want to do business with us. if they choose to work with a TMC and they want to book through the GDS, we’ll make that available for them. If they want to book directly with us, we’ll make that available for them. If they want to book directly on our website using their corporate code, we’ll do that. Our Sonesta Global Preferred program gives a lot of our corporate travelers chainwide discounts, whether through [an online booking tool] or our website.

    BTN: How is transient request-for-proposals volume this year, and are you noticing anything different in that process?

    Macaluso: We see more off off-cycle RFPs, but in general, the volume of RFPs versus last year continues to increase. It’s increased year over year. Our goal is to get more exposure with all of our existing hotels as they grow. We’ve seen business cases increase for our hotels and more acceptances because [buyers are] seeing a Sonesta in a location that maybe they didn’t consider before. … We have a centralized RFP team that supports us.

    BTN: Are SMEs and infrastructure-related travelers using RFPs or are they booking more informally?

    Macaluso: It depends. A lot of smaller organizations will work directly with our hotels in the form of a local negotiated rate. Sonesta has a program called Sonesta Business Pass, which will allow an individual hotel to create a program to not only give them a negotiated rate at their hotel, but then give them a chainwide discount to use at any hotel throughout Sonesta.

    A lot of our TMC partners have specific curated SME programs. We’re seeing a lot of SMEs, instead of coming directly to the hotel to book directly, are partnering with the TMC. We’ll work with them either way, because a lot of our larger corporate accounts do the same thing.

    BTN: For a lot of hotel companies, staffing shortages were a major concern post-pandemic. Is it still?

    Macaluso: Staffing was a huge challenge from the pandemic, we’ve leaned into quality assurance with each of our hotels, quality assurance audits to make sure they’re upholding the standards of what a Royal Sonesta is, what a Sonesta is, what an ES is. Three years ago, staffing challenges would’ve been probably the biggest topic. … There’s always going to be a staffing question, but from us, from a quality-service perspective, it’s not something that’s hindering us.

    [ad_2]

    businesstravelnews@ntmllc.com (Business Travel News)

    Source link

  • Omni Courts Corporates as it Pushes Toward Luxury

    [ad_1]

    Omni’s Jeff Doane talks…

    • Moving upmarket and catering to corporate
      travelers
    • Omni’s SME Select Business program
    • Rate outlook for 2026

    Dallas-based hotel company Omni Hotels & Resorts, which has 50 properties open in the
    U.S. and Canada, is investing heavily in its product and service as it looks to
    ascend the hotel service-tier and capture more of the corporate market. Omni
    chief commercial officer Jeff Doane, who
    joined the company last year    , spoke with BTN managing editor Chris Davis
    last month at the Global Business Travel Association convention in Denver about
    the company’s luxury ambitions, its push for small-to-midsize businesses and the
    effects of macroeconomic uncertainty. Edited excerpts follow.

    BTN: You’ve been
    at Omni about a year and a half now. How has the experience been?

    Jeff Doane: I
    love it. My background includes serving as chief commercial officer at Accor
    after it acquired Fairmont in 2016. I had worked for Fairmont for a number of
    years, and probably the best experience was helping move Fairmont from a
    four-star, upper-upscale brand into the luxury space, creating
    more of an experiential type of brand. Omni is trying to kind of do the same
    thing, and that really appealed to me. The culture here is strong, and everybody’s
    going in the same direction and is focused on the same things.

    BTN: How does
    that upmarket strategy translate to the business travel segment?

    Doane: You want
    to tailor your product around the needs of your customer. There’s a service
    experience that’s expected when you’re in that four- to five-star space. Then moving
    from one that provides just that to a brand that’s creating more unique and
    rewarding and personal experiences for travelers to me is the difference
    between four and four-and-a-half stars. Then it escalates right to Ritz-Carlton
    and Four Seasons where they have such attention on the guests. We want to be
    right in the heart of that luxury space.

    From a product standpoint, we’ve invested $2.5 billion in
    our hotels over the past three to five years, and we’re poised to do the same
    in the next three to five. We know that business traveler wants great Wi-Fi,
    great breakfast, great gym, great sleep experience. Those are the things that
    we’re really focused on in terms of specifically for the business traveler. And
    that experiential side is, why are you in town and do you want a foam pillow or
    a feather pillow? Do you want to be on a low floor or a high floor? What are
    the things that specifically turn the needle for you?

    BTN: Does that
    change the corporate customers you’re targeting, either on a corporate or
    individual level?

    Doane: Within
    every company there’s levels of travel. You may be at the midscale end of the
    market, and you may be working with Amazon, but Ritz-Carlton is working with
    Amazon too. So your customer ends up being the same, where you fall in that
    spectrum determines who ends up staying in those hotels. Certain customers will
    be like, ‘We just started working with you. This is fantastic. We love your
    product.’ So it’s new to him. I think there’s a lot of that kind of opportunity
    for us, but I think there’s also a lot of companies that we’re working with
    where maybe a different traveler within their organization stays with us. 

    BTN: Along those
    lines, all of the big hotel companies in the U.S. are multi-brand up and down
    the line, including luxury. How do you carve a niche for yourself?

    Doane: We’ve
    always said we’re not replacing Marriott or Hilton or Hyatt. They have so many
    dots on the map and cater to every traveler. It would be naive for us to think
    that was possible. But we are a complementary brand for people who want higher-touch
    service, and we think that we can win people over once they experience this.

    BTN: The
    macroeconomic picture has been volatile this year. What are you hearing from corporate
    clients? Are they cutting back?

    Doane: They’re
    just plugging along. A lot of our customers say they’ve had a pretty good first
    half of the year and a lot say the second half is going to be like the first
    half.

    [On tariffs,] we have to come with some conclusion on this
    or something’s got to give. [In a session on GBTA’s Business Travel Index] the
    speaker said if the tariffs end up at 20 percent, there will be an impact. I
    don’t know that there’s not another way to look at it. So you’re hoping that
    cooler heads prevail and it ends up in 3 percent to 5 percent range. The longer
    the uncertainty lasts, the more it’s in people’s heads.

    BTN: Are requests
    for proposals or how buyers communicate changing?

    Doane: We’re
    seeing more customers saying, you know what, we work with the big brands and we
    have that kind of relationship with them, but we’re looking to try to figure
    out how we complement that. How do we create a more diversified set of options
    for our traveler? This year, year to date, business travel revenue has grown
    for us by 17 percent and volume has grown 10 percent

    I think it’s the customer saying, ‘I don’t like to be so
    boxed in.’ And we’re a little bit more of a one-on-one relationship with the
    customer and that’s real important too because they like to know who to call.

    BTN: You launched
    the Omni
    Select Business program     in April. What’s the early verdict?

    Doane: A year ago
    I came to this show thinking we could be better at business travel. We
    learned that a number of the big brands have those kinds of programs just for
    small to medium-sized companies. Well, Omni is a small to medium-sized hotel
    company, so I think we’re a natural for that.

    We’re real happy with how it’s progressing. We thought 50 to
    75 accounts would be a good start, and we’re already at 200. 

    BTN: Does its
    success give you any ideas in terms of enhancing it?

    Doane: We came
    out with a 9 percent discount off of our normal rates, and we realized that
    probably wasn’t rewarding enough. So just recently we changed it to 12 percent.

    BTN: Are you
    integrating AI into your RFP process or operations?

    Doane: Not in
    RFPs yet, but we’ve moved our reservation system to the cloud. There’s a
    certain amount of AI involved in that in terms of knowing your guests and
    understanding them. We are working with a company called BlueConic to better
    understand our guests. If we know what a traveler wants from us, we can take
    better care of them and develop those personalized offers.

    BTN: How are you
    approaching 2026 rate strategies?

    Doane: The latest
    projection I saw from CBRE was like 1.8 percent to 2 percent growth for next
    year. [Note: CBRE
    in May projected     full-year 2025 U.S. average daily rate to increase 1.2
    percent year over year and revenue per available room to increase 1.3 percent.]
    I’m not sure we’re back to stabilized occupancy altogether in the United
    States. I don’t know that there’s enough pressure for hotel companies to really
    try to drive rate. You’ll try and move it to accommodate cost increases. We’re at
    that stage of trying to get our foot in the door with a lot of companies and
    try and expose our product to them and their travelers. And that’s not the time
    where you’re pushing for double-digit increases, you know?

    BTN: What’s ahead
    on the development front?

    Doane: We have a
    beautiful brand-new hotel opening in Fort Lauderdale in October, right at the
    marina and convention center. We are working on a project in Raleigh, N.C.,
    again right at the convention center. Same thing down in New Orleans. And then
    there’s a bunch of other projects that we’re talking to people about.

    [ad_2]

    businesstravelnews@ntmllc.com (Business Travel News)

    Source link

  • Travelport Pushes Ahead in Complex Distribution Landscape

    Travelport Pushes Ahead in Complex Distribution Landscape

    [ad_1]

    Travelport’s Greg Webb discusses:

    • Progress and plans for Deem
    • American Airlines’ NDC about-face
    • The next frontier in lodging distribution

    Global distribution system provider Travelport in recent years has evolved its product offering, acquiring online booking tool Deem while launching Travelport Plus, a unified distribution platform that it recently enhanced with new search abilities, while working with airlines to distribute New Distribution Capability content. Travelport CEO Greg Webb during the recent Global Business Travel Association annual convention in Atlanta spoke with BTN managing editor Chris Davis about the company’s efforts to simplify what he considers a business travel landscape that is increasing in complexity. Edited excerpts follow. 

    BTN: It’s been almost 18 months since Travelport acquired Deem. What’s the status of the integration, and what are your plans for it?

    Greg Webb: Travelport before I got here had a corporate online booking tool, which they eventually got rid of. I didn’t necessarily strategically set out to move back into the OBT space. At the same time, when we looked at Deem, we really did believe it was the best product out there and that with all the things that were going on in the industry, it would be a good fit in the portfolio. 

    It was owned by Enterprise Holdings, so it was doing some things specifically for Enterprise. … We [thought we] just needed to focus on the things that Deem does well and make them do that better. It took about a year in terms of real integration of staff and technology into the Travelport realm, but that went very smoothly. We’ve completed all that, and we’ve been very happy with it, and we think strategically it will continue to do very well. Kyle Moore now is the general manager there, and the strategy he’s laid out with the Deem team aligns with what we talk about more broadly, which is the theme of modern retailing, which is trying to make the complex simple and trying to make sure that it starts with the consumer.

    BTN: In terms of Deem’s global footprint, are you where you want to be, or is further expansion planned?

    Webb: Deem today is primarily North America-based, but we absolutely have expansion plans. We think it fits nicely into a number of what I would call first-cut countries that it’s basically ready for today, and we’ve got a list of expansion plans after that. So, I think we’ll absolutely take advantage of getting a larger global footprint. 

    BTN: Is there a timetable on that? 

    Webb: We’ll most likely say something later this year.

    I didn’t necessarily strategically set out to move back into the OBT space. At the same time, when we looked at Deem, we really did believe it was the best product out there and that with all the things that were going on in the industry it would be a good fit in the portfolio.”

    BTN: What’s the status of client migration to Travelport Plus?

    Webb: We’re 100 percent done with everything that’s non-U.S. In the U.S., we are kind of mid-80ish percent in terms of complete. We’ve got some of the more complex guys that will happen in the third and fourth quarter of this year. I don’t want to overcommit, but we’ll be more than 90 percent complete by the end of the year in North America, which means overall [we’ll be in] the mid-90s of complete with the upgrade to Travelport Plus. And so we should be complete in 2025.

    BTN: And in terms of the prior GDSs?

    Webb: In terms of Travelport Plus the platform, that’s not a destination, that’s a journey. We’re going to continue to enhance and update the overall platform as it grows as our next-gen system. 

    BTN: You’ve continued throughout this year wrapping in especially foreign carriers with more NDC programs. How is that progressing?

    Webb: It’s progressing really well. Since the beginning of the year we’ve signed and in many cases implemented Etihad, Emirates—which just went live a month ago—Qatar, SAS and Virgin Atlantic. So, it’s been a steady stream. 

    NDC is supposed to be a standard, but it is a standard in name only, in that every carrier implements differently. We’re getting better at making sure we start with a standard template associated with the schema that they happen to be running and then build off that. We’ve also built some tools on our side to make sure that, post-signature headed toward implementation, we know the right questions to ask. Ask better questions, and you get better answers, and I think over time, not just us, but the industry has gotten better at asking the right questions about how carriers want to implement their version of NDC.

    BTN: Do you see a lot of variance in those versions of implementation?

    Webb: Yes. Despite the fact there are a handful of tech vendors that provide the software around it, the actual implementation, on an airline-to-airline basis, there’s a decent amount of variation. And that’s even on what I would call a standard implementation. Different carriers have different objectives that they’re trying to effectively use the technology to push through the new NDC standard. For some it’s ancillaries, for some it’s bundles, for some it’s dynamic pricing. As the objectives change the look and feel of the implementation changes. 

    BTN: Is the NDC share of volume increasing?

    Webb: It is increasing, and we expect it to continue to increase even more moving forward. At some point we expect it to start getting more rapid growth, instead of going a couple of points at a time, you’d expect it to jump.

    BTN: Is it a couple of points at a time now?

    Webb: Yes, but it depends on the carrier. Different carriers are moving faster, some are moving significantly slower. In some cases, it depends whether the carriers are being aggressive—less of a carrot, more of a stick. 

    I think NDC should move at the pace of both suppliers getting what they want out of it, which means better being able to put their offering through the channel in a way that makes sense, and a better buying experience for consumers. You can’t have one without the other. If I was trying to get happy travelers, I think the growth of NDC on the sell side should be based on the fact that I’m able to better offer things that consumers want.

    We have from beginning had a very strong partnership with American. We were willing to do whatever we needed to from a technical perspective to make them successful in the market. We continue to do that.”

    BTN: What do you make of American Airlines’ recalibration on this, and do you think it has a broader impact beyond American?

    Webb: In a broad sense, it’s no secret that the airline community has had a direct-to-consumer push over a very long period of time, 15 years or so, maybe longer. As travel gets more complex, we sit here at GBTA and everybody here travels all the time, and we know how to buy. … That’s not the general consumer. The general consumer flies maybe one time a year. And the idea of restricting their choice to a single carrier with a single way to look at it in this complex world today just becomes more and more impractical for the infrequent flyer.

    Because if you’re going to take your family of four on a vacation and you get one day of vacation a year, the idea of, “Well, I’ll just go look at pricing on one airline” makes zero sense. Most consumers spend hours and hours. We did an informal study at an airport, and there were crazy answers on “How much do you shop before you purchase a leisure trip?” The answers were astounding: “I shop seven different websites 21 times over four weeks before I make a buying decision.”

    There are perfectly good use cases for why people should go to an airline’s website. You do it all the time, simple point to point. There are lots of reasons that they should certainly consume those travelers in a direct-to-consumer manner.

    On the other hand, there are a lot of very complex things [for which] it makes sense to comparison-shop, to spend time talking to an expert, to make sure you have the best research you can find. And that doesn’t lend itself to that. I think what American got themselves wrapped up in was an idea of trying to really break consumer buying behavior. Ultimately, I think that’s what required a bit of the recalibration, which was just, “Hey, we still want to be where travelers are. We still want to make sure that we have supportive partners in the industry, supportive resellers of our product and people that can be advocates.” And I think at some point they decided they needed to make sure that they still had advocates in the industry for themselves and their product.

    BTN: Did American share any thoughts with you now that they’re back in EDIFACT channels?

    Webb: We have from beginning had a very strong partnership with American. We were willing to do whatever we needed to from a technical perspective to make them successful in the market. We continue to do that, and ultimately I think the issues that they ran into weren’t issues we were involved with, they were issues with others in the industry, so I think you’ll probably get a better answer from someone else. But we continued to, during that entire time, do what American needed us to support their strategy.

    BTN: How are you with Travelport’s position in GDS booking share?

    Webb: Over the last four years we’ve continued to grow share steadily. I think we’ll continue to do that. We’ve been really happy with the way that our product rollouts have gone recently. I think our vision for where we think the technological layers of [the industry] is going, our focus on making sure that we are going to be the best multi-source content aggregator out there, and that our use of both the core components of the technology and also some of the things that we’ve just announced, like the Content Curation layer and Content Optimizer, along with our use of AI and machine learning we think will give us an advantage.

    BTN: We’ve been talking a lot about air, but how about hotel? As chains look at attribute-based selling, are you prepared technologically if they want to start differentiating?

    Webb: We’re in a good place on hotel, but we haven’t talked about this very publicly. But we think there’s opportunity in the hotel space, and behind the scenes have been spending time [on this] on the Travelport Plus upgrade. We’re completely replatforming our hotel components. And as we do that, all of the things that you’ve talked about—attribute shopping and selling, the ability for us to do cross-sell and upsell componentry in a better way than we have—we can do it today, but we’d like to be more efficient in the way that we do that. So we believe that that market will continue. 

    It’s another [area] where it’s getting more complex, and when you put complexity into it, the thing that you really want to drive, what consumers really look for is somebody to simplify that complexity. And I think there’s space out there to do that.

    [ad_2]

    businesstravelnews@ntmllc.com (Business Travel News)

    Source link

  • Serko Ready to Capitalize Off ‘Foundations’

    Serko Ready to Capitalize Off ‘Foundations’

    [ad_1]

    Serko’s Grafton discusses:

    • Hitting the accelerator on customer growth
    • Tackling hotel attachment
    • Executing a broad content strategy

    New Zealand-based travel technology supplier Serko, along with its Zeno corporate travel and expense platform, has been building a customer base both among large enterprise travel programs and, via its relationship with Booking.com for Business, small and midsized clients. Serko co-founder and CEO Darrin Grafton spoke with BTN executive editor Michael B. Baker during the recent Global Business Travel Association Convention in Atlanta about how Serko is making inroads with U.S. customers and the company’s content, servicing and development strategies. An edited transcript follows.

    BTN: What’s Serko’s current growth trajectory?

    Darrin Grafton: We’ve been on quite a big growth journey. We’ve been setting the foundations, coming out of Covid and waiting for the markets to fully recover. We signed a lot of deals during Covid to get the markets ready. We’ve had the renewal of Booking.com for another five years for Booking for Business. 

    On the managed travel side, we’ve been continually growing in our home markets, onboarding companies like Rio Tinto, and now in the U.S., we’ve been highly focused on getting the core group of companies as highly referenceable sites and having all of that put in place—companies like Visa. We’ve really focused on how we can hit the accelerator now and start to push forward. We’re working a lot with the midmarket travel management companies and also the megas as well. We’re really just starting to now find that sweet spot of how to go fast.

    BTN: What strategy are you using to draw in U.S.-based business?

    Grafton: We’re a public company, so we’re well-capitalized. One of the key parts of our technology is we sometimes feel new to businesses until they realize they use us in Australasia. They find that they can reference themselves. Some of it is a push from the Australian companies saying they want to use it in the U.S., and sometimes it’s a pull from the U.S. division. Our own customers can be our best advocates. From now, it’s how do we amplify that.

    BTN: Are you looking to expand more in other geographies outside of Australasia and the U.S.?

    Grafton: We’re in 180 countries with Booking.com. Our focus is to do well in the regions we are in and get a really strong base. Most American companies have some form of global rollout with customers, but being highly focused on being awesome in the area those customers need us to be right now. Our focus is always what the customer is actually going to need in that region, so we want to build a phenomenal system for North America then wider as they need us, Europe and wider.

    We have that ability to now bring the technology we’ve done for Booking to managed travel. They can bring consumer experience where they had leakage of hotels. We can bring that inside the system.”

    BTN: On the Booking side, is it largely previously unmanaged clients you are seeing?

    Grafton: You’ve got our unique selling proposition, which is what we do with Booking and other players. We have that ability to now bring the technology we’ve done for Booking to managed travel. They can bring consumer experience where they had leakage of hotels. We can bring that inside the system, and we can shift that monetization so that 40 to 60 percent leakage they may have been getting, we can bring that back into program, give them a great user experience and give them all the content frameworks. That’s quite huge, and that’s helped TMCs make money and is the main pain point for why they have to mop up all the expenses. We bring it back into the managed travel program, so that increases the savings and the profitability of the TMC. 

    BTN: What’s been your technology focus?

    Grafton: Comparison shopping is quite key. It’s one of the foundations of the Zeno platform. You can shop normal and [New Distribution Capability] at the same time and mix and match. It’s the same with hotel content, being able to compare your global distribution rates and your negotiated rates to your Booking.com rates. If the customer wants loyalty, they can go through that channel, and if they want savings for the business, they have the right process through that selection. If you have the right content and the consumer-grade experience, you have that ability to drive that through.

    We’ve learned a lot working with Booking.com and how you drive that experience. It’s taking the learnings from driving a big consumer brand site into the managed travel space. We add a bit of AI, and that’s working out. If you always stay [in a particular hotel], then we preference that and shop that automatically in the shopping cart, which means you are saving time as well. Rather than having to wade through 50 options, you get the 11 curated options that are doing that. 

    What we found is that people would shop flights and shop hotel later, and what happens is every day or week that goes by that you don’t attach the hotel, the rate increases. By the time you make the choice later on, you’re paying 15 or 20 percent more for that rate. The Zeno technology is about trying to shop that one transaction and get the right selection at the cheapest price. That’s the logic that creates huge savings for business.

    BTN: How has your content strategy changed in light of the fragmentation we are seeing?

    Grafton: We’ve been doing NDC since the start. We were one of the first certified applications on NDC. We’ve done Travelfusion, ATPCO, TPConnects, and now we’ve launched on Sabre. We’ve done all the Sabre connections. What we’re trying to do is make sure whatever systems the travel management companies are using, we’re connecting into those. It’s all about trying to get rid of the friction. If it’s easier for us to do it on Sabre or a GDS, then we’ll do it that way, or do it as a direct connect, whichever is the easier way to get the transaction through. Our NDC shopping is quite unique, because you can do the NDC fare and the low-cost and don’t have to do two shopping experiences.

    BTN: What about servicing capabilities?

    Grafton: We’ve done advance flight changes now. Our philosophy is, what is booked online stays online, so we’re trying to build all the technology that when disruption happens and change happens, we put that into the technology and make sure the traveler or travel manager can do it. We’re continually improving on that cycle. We’ve rolled out even more advanced change technology very recently over the last couple of months, rolling that through Australia and the U.S. at the moment. 

    BTN: What does your development roadmap look like?

    Grafton: We’re continually moving the product forward. It’s how you can do more forward-look at how you can manage disruption. If you’re flying in from New Zealand to New York, and you’re going by [Los Angeles], and your main flight is delayed, can AI automatically do the adjustment for us? We’re looking at all different aspects of AI around booking, reshopping, changes, reporting and sourcing. Those four AI engines are the foundation of how we look at the evolution of the platform. It’s continually enhancing for the U.S. market to bring more and more customers online. 

    BTN: In your most recent earnings, you mentioned the goal to become cash-positive this year. Is that on track?

    Grafton: We’ve guided that market that we’re trying to go to cash-flow break-even now into this financial year and get that whole scale of revenue where we want it to be. We haven’t had to increase the employee count too much because we’ve been building up the high-performance team, so we’re able to do so much more with the same team as we’ve gone through that curve. We’ve still been growing our topline revenue by 48 percent. It’s quite a good model right now.

    [ad_2]

    businesstravelnews@ntmllc.com (Business Travel News)

    Source link

  • Global Hotel Alliance, Now 20, Seeks Corporate Niche

    Global Hotel Alliance, Now 20, Seeks Corporate Niche

    [ad_1]

    Global Hotel Alliance CEO Chris Hartley talks: 

    • The alliance’s growth strategy
    • The nature of the network’s TMC partnerships
    • The state of international business travel demand

    The Global Hotel Alliance network of independent hotels, founded 20 years ago, in recent years has continues to grow, adding properties throughout the world and reaching a new peak in 2023 in bookings under its GHA Discovery loyalty program. The network, which includes hotel companies like Kempinski Hotels, NH Hotels and Pan Pacific Hotels and Resorts among dozens of others, has established partnerships with travel management companies including American Express Global Business Travel and BCD Travel to help it compete against large global chains for a share of international business travel. GHA CEO Chris Hartley last month during New York University’s annual International Hospitality Industry Investment Conference in New York spoke with BTN managing editor Chris Davis about the state of the network, business travel trends and the promise of direct booking. Edited excerpts follow. 

    BTN: What’s the status of the alliance in terms of membership?

    Chris Hartley: The alliance is now celebrating its 20th anniversary. We’ve been around a long time, but it’s a little bit like the oil tanker analogy: We’ve been moving very slowly, and we’re not necessarily the most recognizable brand out there. But we’ve, nevertheless, over the last 20 years, managed to not only bring in but mostly retain lots of wonderful independent brands. We’ve now got 40 independent brands participating in the alliance, representing around 800 hotels. We are mostly owner-operators, which is quite unique in the industry today. Out of the 800 hotels, probably over 500 of them are owner-operated.

    They all have a lot in common, namely this desire to self-preserve as independent. The alliance has been pretty successful at providing a platform for them to collaborate. We are basically a sharing economy. As we share data, we share technology, we share a common currency under the loyalty program. Every alliance member has to adopt that sort of marketing technology platform that we provide.

    The loyalty program is our core product, but we’re very much supporting them in terms of driving business travel through relationships with TMCs, which we manage on behalf of the alliance members.

    BTN: Are you still looking to actively expand the alliance?

    Hartley: Very much. We have 800 hotels today. My current optimistic prediction is that by the end of next year we’ll hit 1,000 hotels. I am pretty confident that with the current growth path we’ll achieve that number. Not that we really have a growth objective. … We’re not going to just sign a brand because it’s nice to have an extra brand. It’s got to fit with the spirit and mindset of what the alliance is all about.

    This market is difficult because there’s not a lot of independents left. The challenge for us is, the U.S. is our No. 1 outbound market by far. But unfortunately the U.S. market is a difficult one to get a strong hotel presence, because like every brand is affiliated to Hilton or Marriott or wherever. We’re looking at opportunities in this market to build relationships through partnerships. TMCs are a very good way. … It gives us huge customer base volume in this market, which is great. It helps build awareness of the alliance across North America.

    But certainly in terms of outbound business travel from the U.S., in the absence of a strong brand presence, we focus on relationships like with American Express and BCD.

    Corporate travelers are very loyal, especially U.S. corporate travelers. We are playing on a much smaller scale, but we want to be able to offer the visibility to our brands and a loyalty program that at least semi-competes with some of the big programs.”

    BTN: What do the partnerships with TMCs entail? How do they actually work?

    Hartley: We’re effectively doing leverage buying on behalf of the alliance. We’re going to Amex and saying, we would like to do a global referred partnership for all of our hotels, or all the ones that want to participate, which are most of them. We would like to get a preferred deal whereby we’re global preferred status, which will give us more visibility.

    For Amex, the advantage is that for them to knock on the door of 40 independent small brands and do a sensible partnership with them is not really in their interest, efficiency-wise. It’s a win-win. We come to Amex and say, here’s 800 hotels that want to participate. In return, they’re giving smaller brands access to this global partnership deal.

    Then secondly, the loyalty program is important. Corporate travelers are very loyal, especially U.S. corporate travelers. We are playing on a much smaller scale, but we want to be able to offer the visibility to our brands and a loyalty program that at least semi-competes with some of the big programs.

    BTN: Does the loyalty program allow you to market directly to the corporate traveler, bypassing the TMC?

    Hartley: It does. Obviously the TMC partnerships and other partnerships with their travel agency communities is important and sacrosanct. We recognize those customers. But yes, to answer your question, we now have a database of 27 million, 2.2 million here in the U.S., and we have the rights to market to all of them. That means we can create consumer-direct relationship with people, especially leisure travelers.

    For example, Anantara Hotels & Resorts is more a of resort brand, so you’re not getting a lot of business travel going to their hotels. Through the loyalty program, we have the ability to market to consumers who are maybe going skiing, or playing golf, or going to the Maldives, or whatever it is. The loyalty program is then the hook to get consumers to give us that data. Then from there we’re able to market across all the brands.We’re very much measuring as a KPI cross-brand movement.

    BTN: What’s your view of the business travel market and demand?

    Hartley: First I would say business travel was, for us globally, very slow to recover. You’ve heard that everywhere. The U.S. market recovered the fastest and domestic everywhere—Australia, China, U.S., U.K.—all of those markets recovered to 100 percent of 2019 levels by the end of 2022, domestic only.

    But if you look at international, we’ve only seen 60 percent to 70 percent recovery. Markets like China, it’s only this year that we’re getting to about 60 percent recovery for international business travel.

    BTN: Is that bookings or revenue?

    Hartley: Both, really. But I’m generally looking at revenue figures. … Strong rates have helped the optics of the recovery, because the revenues have been good or better.

    But if you’re looking to this year, we’ve seen a slowdown in U.S. business travel, but we are still seeing strong growth internationally. So international business travel is about 11 percent up this year over last year, which for us is good. That is driven by China and India still recovering. Other markets like the U.S., Australia, and others seem to have plateaued at this point. 

    BTN: Does the alliance receive requests for proposals? Do you deal with corporate market on that level?

    Hartley: All the RFP processes are done by the brands themselves. We basically created the TMC relationship, the pricing model, the contracting, the reporting, the event marketing, the direct marketing that the TMCs are doing, we do all of that. Then they do their own RFPs.

    For example, let’s say we’ve got a hotel in Sydney that says, I want to get Amazon, can you help us get the right people [at the TMC] to bid on this RFP for the Amazon deal in Sydney?” Then we are involved in helping them, but we’re not actually doing the process.

    [ad_2]

    businesstravelnews@ntmllc.com (Business Travel News)

    Source link

  • 5Qs: Concur Travel’s Charlie Sultan

    5Qs: Concur Travel’s Charlie Sultan

    [ad_1]

    Hosted by BTN Editorial Director Elizabeth West

    Business Travel News editorial director Elizabeth West and Concur Travel president Charlie Sultan discuss the ongoing rollout of the new Concur booking platform and how it addresses fragmentation with new content partnerships including New Distribution Capability content from global distribution systems. But Sultan reminds the industry that TripLink, which has been available for a decade, is gaining new prominence in the solution set as agencies struggle to service NDC bookings, and he muses about opportunities to innovate around sustainability reporting a via Concur Expense and how it might eventually tie back to the point of sale. Even if you read the two-part article based on this interview, Charlie offers more thoughts in the video version. Take a look. 
    ___________________________________________________________________

    [ad_2]

    businesstravelnews@ntmllc.com (Business Travel News)

    Source link

  • 5Qs with Sonesta Int’l CEO John Murray

    5Qs with Sonesta Int’l CEO John Murray

    [ad_1]

    Hosted by BTN Editorial Director Elizabeth West

    Business Travel News editorial director Elizabeth West and Sonesta International CEO John Murray talk about reported moderated leisure and business travel growth in 2024, but also optimism for a soft landing for the U.S. economy. Murray offers insights into what continues to drive business travel (hint: it’s still led by meetings) as well as rates, and how Sonesta has structured its sales strategy to reach deep into the business travel market. We’ll also talk about Sonesta’s new lifestyle brand The James that is seeing more openings this year as well as its economy-minded brand Sonesta Essentials, which launched a year ago – along with Sonesta’s Worksuite model designed for remote and hybrid work models. Murray offers a unique vantage point in this BTN video interview.
     ___________________________________________________________________

    [ad_2]

    businesstravelnews@ntmllc.com (Business Travel News)

    Source link

  • Extended Stay America’s Kelly Poling

    Extended Stay America’s Kelly Poling

    [ad_1]

    Hosted by BTN Editorial Director Elizabeth West

    As extended-stay competition heats up, an established player stays cool.

    Business Travel News editorial director Elizabeth West hosts Extended
    Stay America chief commercial officer Kelly Poling     to talk about
    business travel trajectory in 2024, the recent decline in extended-stay
    occupancy, new competition from major hotel brands, product
    diversification at ESA, and whether the company will move to
    attribute-based selling. Poling offers her vantage point in this BTN video interview.
     ___________________________________________________________________ 

    [ad_2]

    businesstravelnews@ntmllc.com (Business Travel News)

    Source link

  • New Emburse CEO Ready for ‘Goliath’ Showdown

    New Emburse CEO Ready for ‘Goliath’ Showdown

    [ad_1]

    Emburse CEO Marne Martin discusses:

    • The durability of expense management services
    • Strategies in taking on the ‘Goliath’ Concur
    • Potential acquisitions

    Travel and expense software provider Emburse recently announced a new CEO: Marne Martin, a newcomer to the travel and expense industry but a veteran in technology and software, having spent more than 25 years in the industry including a stint as CEO of field management software provider ServicePower.

    Speaking to BTN executive editor Michael B. Baker just about a week into her new role, Martin said there’s an opportunity for Emburse to fill a “gap” leading to what will be the future of expense management, as she sees some of the company’s largest competitors as either slow to innovate or bogged down by other internal issues. “We hear a lot from our customers and our prospects, but I still feel like there are many influences and needs that aren’t being articulated yet, so I want to get in front of that and build Emburse as a company that’s not only listening in this space but advocating and driving what people need in this space,” Martin said.

    In terms of building customers, those opportunities will include going after not only the customer base of market leader Concur—who Martin called “the Goliath that has gotten stuck”—but also “a huge market that’s never been on Concur and maybe has never been on any best-of-breed solution,” she said.

    An edited transcript of the rest of BTN’s interview with Martin follows.

    BTN: What drew you to accept the CEO role at Emburse?

    Marne Martin: For me, I look at categories of software that I have personal experience with but I’m also passionate about. I’ve used Concur and Expensify, and I’ve traveled a lot. I definitely relate to that. But I’m also looking at sectors that aren’t going away. Even if you apply more AI, there still are going to be expenses to manage and oversee. People will still be traveling. I try to pick categories of software that are super durable to the customer need. Then, I try to pick companies that are already proven that they are good companies and have good products and people, but it’s the next level of growth and next scale or inflection point that they’re ready for.

    I was really fortunate with the trust that [Emburse owner K1 Investment Management] and the board and [former Emburse CEO Eric Friedrichsen], transitioning to me. Emburse is really at an inflection point. Of all the various companies I looked at in different categories, it’s an area of software I not only know something about, but it’s also at an inflection point that is interesting. The marketplace is both ripe for disruption with competing solutions, plus there’s a lot of [total addressable market] or greenfield to go after.

    There are not many female CEOs who have been CEO more than once. A lot of the private equity sponsors have started looking for more female operating partners, so I do admire K1. Now, both of their largest companies will be run by female CEOs, so that personally makes me happy, but this is a category that is very interesting for a lot of different private equities. It’s K1 that put their money in the space in building a platform for growth.

    BTN: We often hear promises of “the end of the expense report.” What sort of role does Emburse have in that landscape?

    Martin: People will pay for that. It will be interesting over time what we focus on with our product roadmaps, how we maybe charge for the software and how you think about it might evolve, but it will never change that you need to have a link into expenses, and that will be a critical part for compliance and accounting but also a tool for growth. No business can grow their business if they have uncontrolled and unmanaged expenses. What we do is super important at the heart of how they run their businesses. The easier we can make it for them to not only stay within budget but think about being a driver of their profitable growth and how well we can help them do what they need to do and help their CFOs, that’s a big responsibly and opportunity for Emburse.

    No business can grow their business if they have uncontrolled and unmanaged expenses. What we do is super important at the heart of how they run their businesses.”

    BTN: Emburse has reported fairly rapid revenue growth over the past few years. What’s your strategy to sustain that?

    Martin: Eric and the team have done a great job. So many software companies don’t even get to the size of Emburse. They’ve already done something that hard and unusual. They’ve created a software unicorn. 

    One of the experiences I’ve had throughout my career is how you get things to grow faster organically, and that’s something I’ve done over and over. To simplify it, I think about what’s already working, but how do we just do more of it? If we have a good value prop that we’re executing on, how do we keep driving pipeline? There are some things at Emburse we can do even better. 

    We have taken a surprising number of Concur customers to Emburse for the size of Emburse, but there are a gazillion Concur customers we’ve never even talked to. We’re going to continue scaling what the company does well, and some other areas where I think we can have greater confidence, success and execution; we’ll push on that. I have a lot of experience. I didn’t come from Concur as an example, but the number of multinational and enterprises I’ve worked with in the past are mostly on Concur, so even though I might not have sold them the Concur replacement, I’ve been working with them and know them, and that’s where we’ll continue building. We have a lot of references already. It’s not like we’re starting from scratch. People don’t even know we’re in 120 countries with our software. 

    I also try to find businesses that I can bring a more evangelist or brand advocacy to. That’s why I always care about joining companies I can be authentically passionate about, so we can really start positioning ourselves not only as the size of company that we are but as the size of company that we will be. That growth and that mojo is what encouraged SAP to buy Concur in the first place. I think they’ve been distracted by other things, and the people who built that mojo at Concur have moved on. There’s a huge opportunity for Emburse to go on its own journey. We’re well-positioned to do that, and a lot of that will come through organic growth execution, the maturation of sales and marketing. 

    BTN: You have a long history in software outside of the travel and expense sphere. Are there skills or strategies from those other areas that will be valuable in this industry?

    Martin: For sure. Chrome River, for example, has quite a sophisticated workflow engine. I think it’s as good as what Concur has, maybe better, but at least comparable. I have a lot of experience in other sectors taking rules-based or workflow-based software and starting to layer in AI and machine learning. I’ve been talking to our team about that. Even how you think about facial recognition software or fraud detection software, how you detect anomalies and trends, how you build out AI and machine learning related to anomaly detections, recommendation and learning, it’s pretty much the same regardless of the software category, because it relates to the data and knowledge around that. How you apply it is what needs to be tailored to the use cases that apply to that category of software, and then how you’re able to monetize it. 

    Whether you are looking at infrastructure fault data or asset anomaly data or looking at it for consumer behavior or for expense management, you need to figure out what drives the most business value and improvement from what you already have—like a sophisticated workflow—then thinking about it. AI, to be commercialized, has to be better than a team of data scientists. To be valuable, it has to be better than people. In this day and age, it’s hard to get enough people to solve many of these problems, which is why we use AI and machine learning, and it’s enabled by the cloud and the huge compute powers. ChatGPT is super fun to play with and interact with, but I was laughing that probably the most commercial benefit from ChatGPT or anything like this in the near term is that the cloud hosting bills tripled, because AI consumes so much more of the cloud. As software vendors, we need to put AI to work in ways that will be valuable and customers will pay for it, but the cloud companies and also the people doing the AI chips and semiconductors, they’re the leading indicators of benefiting from these. We need to understand what our customers and prospects really want.

    BTN: What goals have you set as CEO?

    Martin: Some of them are financial goals. Other goals are win goals, brand recognition goals, operational efficiency goals and really thinking how do we build a great company. Emburse is already a great company at its stage. How do we build a great company that’s a $500 million company or even bigger? There are different things when you think about scaling and efficiency then you might think about when you’re focusing on acquiring 13 smaller best-of-breed entities. 

    Taking the company on this journey also will involve talent. Similar to how companies choose different CEOs for different chapters, there will be different people within the organization at all levels that are better suited to different chapters. Some, of course, will always be valuable, because they understand the space and what we do from a core perspective.  Some of the people needs and people processes will evolve as we’re positioning ourselves to the next stage of growth. I really am blessed to come into such a good company that has the domain expertise that’s critical: good products, good people and really excellent customers. 

    AI, to be commercialized, has to be better than a team of data scientists. … It’s hard to get enough people to solve many of these problems, which is why we use AI and machine learning, and it’s enabled by the cloud and the huge compute powers.”

    BTN: Emburse has been pretty busy on the acquisition front in recent years. Are you planning more?

    Martin: TripBam and Roadmap are great acquisitions, and their customer lists are phenomenal. We are going to see how we can cross-fertilize those customers—expense management more to travel, travel more to expense management—to really think about share of wallet across all the businesses that have needs for that. K1 has done a really good job buying up in the U.S. market. There might be some additional travel acquisitions we could make. There are some smaller expense management and other types of companies outside of the U.S. it might be interesting to look at. I always analyze: Can we get those customers and go into that market organically if we are better at organic sales, or do we still need to buy them? When I look at buying them, I really look at are we getting something that’s unique or different, or is it more like consolidation play? 

    We are reviewing our M&A now. K1 is very well funded. We have to find the right acquisitions that really drive value to us, an accretive acquisition, or something that is interesting. We’re thinking software first, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t also thinking about credit card partnerships, financial services and fintech. I’ve built those out as complementary to the software, and in certain cases they can drive greater retention figures and revenue. I do firmly believe that to have a durable software business you have to be growing and developing great software, even if you add other things into what the software does.

    BTN: What sort of connections are you looking to make with Emburse customers?

    Martin: As the company grows, there will come a time when I won’t connect with all the customer or prospects, but that’s something I’m passionate about. I sent out personal emails to our larger customers today. We’ll be doing some events and customer advisory boards. I’m very eager, whether it’s a LinkedIn or email, to get to know them. When you come in, no matter how good a company is, there will be users that are like, “XYZ didn’t work”. Some of the feedback might not be all an A-plus, but that’s also how I learn what thy need and how we need to improve. My formal title is CEO, but I should be called the chief problem solver. That’s my internal title.

    [ad_2]

    mbaker@thebtngroup.com (Michael B. Baker)

    Source link

  • Travelport Investors Complete Equity Financing

    Travelport Investors Complete Equity Financing

    [ad_1]

    A group of Travelport equity holders and lenders have completed their $570 million equity financing investment into the company, a move Travelport said “significantly deleverages” its balance sheet. The investment, announced last month, changes Travelport’s ownership structure as some owners have converted debt to equity, and the current structure now consists of investors including Elliott Investment Management, Davidson Kempner Capital Management, Canyon Partners and Siris Capital. Travelport CEO Greg Webb in a statement said the investment sets up Travelport “for increased speed, agility and innovation in 2024,” with the capability for Travelport to continue investing in its technology platforms.

    [ad_2]

    mbaker@thebtngroup.com (Michael B. Baker)

    Source link

  • Travelport Investors Complete Equity Financing

    Travelport Investors Complete Equity Financing

    [ad_1]

    A group of Travelport equity holders and lenders have completed their $570 million equity financing investment into the company, a move Travelport said “significantly deleverages” its balance sheet. The investment, announced last month, changes Travelport’s ownership structure as some owners have converted debt to equity, and the current structure now consists of investors including Elliott Investment Management, Davidson Kempner Capital Management, Canyon Partners and Siris Capital. Travelport CEO Greg Webb in a statement said the investment sets up Travelport “for increased speed, agility and innovation in 2024,” with the capability for Travelport to continue investing in its technology platforms.

    [ad_2]

    mbaker@thebtngroup.com (Michael B. Baker)

    Source link

  • As 'Blind Spots' Widen, Traxo Targets Off-Channel Opportunities

    As 'Blind Spots' Widen, Traxo Targets Off-Channel Opportunities

    [ad_1]

    Traxo’s Andres Fabris discusses:

    • Growing interest from duty-of-care providers
    • New opportunities for SME clients
    • A bigger focus on data insights

    Off-channel booking aggregator Traxo has had a flurry of partnership announcements in recent months, including a new relationship with CWT, integration into Cornerstone Information Systems and becoming a feature for Booking.com’s business platform. Traxo founder and CEO Andres Fabris spoke with BTN executive editor Michael B. Baker during the recent Phocuswright Conference about what is driving partnership growth as well as where Traxo will focus its technology strategy in the coming year. An edited transcript follows.

    BTN: Where are you seeing the biggest interest from potential partners?

    Andres Fabris: There’s a lot of interest in structured travel data, and we’re seeing interest across the whole travel ecosystem. You saw the announcement with Cornerstone, which is more about the back office and mid-office on the [travel management company] side. We’ve seen interest from CWT, which is essentially referring their clients to the Traxo system. 

    Duty-of-care providers feel like the blind spots that they have are getting bigger, because almost all of the duty-of-care providers tend to get feeds and data from the TMC and [global distribution system] channels. As those bookings to continue to shift direct, that blind spot gets bigger and bigger. 

    We see that in the form of partnerships throughout the ecosystem. Expense providers also crave the data to pre-fill out the expense reports. With the duty-of-care providers, the more data they have, the more comprehensive visibility, the better they can do their job. They can keep more people safe because they’re aware of that location. 

    On the corporate side, which is our main focus, we’re seeing a surge of interest of corporations realizing the same thing. Every time they hear the words [New Distribution Capability], retailing revolution, supplier direct and airline portals, they get concerned about how they’re going to get that visibility in an environment where the traveler is being tempted to book across a variety of different places.

    BTN: Are your duty-of-care relationships direct with the providers or via TMCs?

    Fabris: It’s direct relationships with them. It’s two different aspects. The way that the duty-of-care providers historically have gotten information about a traveler that booked outside of the platform into their system was that the traveler had to go in and fill out a form manually. Travelers get busy and they forget, and they don’t necessarily want to broadcast that they have just booked something out of policy, so the adoption rate there has historically been maybe 5 percent. The next generation was, instead of entering it by hand, you can forward your confirmation to International SOS or Crisis 24. Behind the scenes, Traxo is powering all of their sites, including the data processing. That’s Generation 2, because it’s easier than manually entering it, so adoption rates are maybe 20 percent, but you’re still missing the other 80 percent.

    Now, the reason we have these direct duty-of-care relationships, is we are able to auto-detect all of the bookings for every travel site service point of sale around the world for the entire company in real time, and provide that information to the company. Now the company is saying, “Please send that downstream to our duty-of-care provider,” so now we have direct relationships with those duty-of-care providers and plumbing in place where we can shift data down to them. Even those duty-of-care providers are starting to refer business to Traxo, so in a lot of cases, we have referral relationships. They know if Traxo’s involved, their visibility improves, and the value proposition grows. It’s a very symbiotic relationship.

    BTN: What about expense partners?

    Fabris: We’ve been powering data processing for Chrome River, Coupa, Abacus, Roadmap, several others. It’s the same value proposition. There, the realizing is, there’s pretty much a one-to-one correlation between a business trip and expense report, and all the raw materials that go into an expense report, all the data elements from the trip, and of course the traveler would prefer not to have to painstakingly enter a folio by hand. It’s much easier if you can forward in a folio. We’re getting closer to either a zero-effort expense report or get rid of the expense report altogether. 

    BTN: To what extent is airlines’ NDC push driving interest in Traxo?

    Fabris: The airlines are just getting started. Just to kind of get folks a peek around the corner off what’s coming, we launched a site, NDC Tracker, where we track the progress and the investments that all the airlines are making. There are 67 airlines that are making NDC investments and have made NDC-related announcements. It is something that is going to continue to create a bit of concern and a little bit of chaos. I don’t see it getting better. 

    I see a couple of different approaches that different companies are taking. Some are focused on building the best booking tool and user interface, and the theory is, if I build a better mousetrap, that will magically prevent people from going off-platform. We’ve been building better mousetraps for 20 years, and there’s still 50 percent leakage. There’s another set that say it’s not a [user interface/user experience] issue, it’s a content issue, and if only I were able to get all of the content, then that would prevent leakage. The third bucket is the philosophy that I’ll change the behavior of the traveler, use incentives to drive certain behavior. If I use the right incentives, then magically there will no longer be leakage. 

    Our view is that, for all three, you can get up to a certain point but they are not the answer, because we’ve been trying it as an industry for decades. This data is out there, you ought to know about it, and we can detect it for you seamlessly. Frankly, we don’t care what you do with it. Most of our clients use it to drive compliance and get people back on the platform. A third or our clients go the opposite direction, especially the professional services firms that are in a war for talent. If they give their road warriors a little extra flexibility, maybe that’s an extra retention tool. There’s no easy answer, but if companies don’t do anything, the blind spots are going to get bigger and bigger. 

    BTN: In terms of direct corporate business, will large companies still be the focus, or is there an opportunity with small and midsized clients?

    Fabris: Historically, we’ve had a small but mighty team, so we aim those limited resources at the large accounts, where we can make the biggest influence. That has been our direct focus. We have relationships with TMCs that are reseller relationships to go after the top of the pyramid. midmarket, we have 20 to 25 referral partnerships, so it’s a little more fragmented. We can be the service provider behind the scenes. At the bottom of the pyramid, the SMEs or unmanaged programs, we now have a new self-service capability. We announced a relationship with Booking.com for Business. 

    The nature of that is, we have now built a self-service version of Traxo. It is live and deployed on Booking.com for Business. It’s already live for the U.S. and administrators who have identified English as their primary language. Now, we have an ability to help SMEs as well. I don’t want to necessarily go out and find them individually, so we’re interested in partnering with companies that already have an army of SMEs. That same capability we’re offering can be offered to banks. A lot of banks are making moves into travel and have a lot of credit card holders and account holders who tend to be SMEs.

    BTN: What’s your focus for technology development? Is it all about artificial intelligence?

    Fabris: We already incorporate some AI, machine learning, natural language processing in our data processing. You’ll see us focus much more on getting from data to insights. We have all the data across every point of sale in the world. The next step is, what are you going to do with it? Do you need to go out and negotiate better rates? Do you need to crack the whip on compliance? Do you need to get more dynamic hotel pricing? That’s going to come through a series of visualization tools. We want to add the ability for someone to speak to the application, prompt it, maybe a bar like you can see on ChatGPT and it understands the query. 

    We’re also creating the ability to deliver a Monday morning report. You set it up, and instead of you coming and getting it from us, it just gets deposited right in your inbox. We’re also doing the ability to bulk upload. Let’s say you have a big corporate event and a rooming list. You can also get that into the system as well. Today, that does not come necessarily via confirmations. 

    The last place, where we’re spending a lot of time and energy, is establishing more connections, connectors that are already pre-built, so the menu where Traxo can move data to gets broader and broader.

    [ad_2]

    mbaker@thebtngroup.com (Michael B. Baker)

    Source link

  • New Sabre Leader for Lodging, Ground Details Distribution Strategy

    New Sabre Leader for Lodging, Ground Details Distribution Strategy

    [ad_1]

    Sabre’s Chinmai Sharma discusses:

    • Broadening Sabre’s focus beyond North America and corporate
    • New APIs for hotel merchandizing
    • Efforts on standardizing sustainability data

    Sabre called lodging and ground distribution a “significant focus and expected growth area” for the travel technology company when it announced a new leader for the division in recent weeks. Chinmai Sharma, a hospitality technology and revenue management veteran who now is Sabre Travel Solutions’ global head of lodging, ground and sea, spoke with BTN executive editor Michael B. Baker during the recent Phocuswright Conference about Sabre’s plans for the segment and how technology is evolving with the distribution needs of both suppliers and travel agencies. An edited transcript follows.

    BTN: What will you be focusing on in your new role?

    Chinmai Sharma: Hotels in particular is an interesting area. We are very heavily concentrated in North America and corporate, and we want to expand that to leisure travel agencies, midsize and long-tail agencies as well as international. Part of my strategy is to make the program a little bit better. That includes for the travel agent community, we want to be sure we have good compelling content. 

    We have nearly a million hotels already on the platform, and we continuously evaluate more partners to bring on the platform, so it becomes more relevant to the travel agency partners. We’re also developing a strategy where, for whatever reason, if we don’t have the right content, we will work with aggregator partners and online travel agencies to bring that unique content in. If there is a requirement in the travel agency community to book certain types of products, we should just have it. 

    The broader aim is to stay relevant in the travel space. In lodging, we already have a dominant share. Globally, a lot of business we do for hotels on the [global distribution system] channel we have the biggest shares, but a lot of that comes from the heavy North American presence of large hotel chains and [travel management companies]. The vision of the leadership team at Sabre is there is room for improvement in lodging, ground and sea, and we add a lot of value to our supply partners, because the quality of customers that we bring is very good. They pay high rates, they spend on property, etc. 

    We are also loyalty-friendly, so the hotels see us a little differently compared to some of the other channels. We are developing our ecosystem in such a way that we want to transfer as much information as the agencies want us to transfer to the hotels so the end traveler has the better experience. That could include communication details, loyalty numbers, loyalty status, preferences, etc. So, if you’re booking through a corporate travel agency or leisure travel agency, the end experience is really good. That’s the focus. Bring really good content and supply to the platform and develop Sabre as a solidly B-to-B technology platform, which adds volume to our travel agency community and our suppliers.

    BTN: Is there an effort equivalent to what’s happening with New Distribution Capability on the lodging side in how lodging content is presented?

    Sharma: Everybody is focused on what they call brand-direct efforts. We differentiate ourselves from the other channels since we pass on as much information as we can. We are on the right side of the loyalty program because we add more value there. The NDC battle in the hotel industry is what we call attribute-based selling. It’s essentially how can you break up the products at the hotel level so you can sell them individually. Hotels are real estate, basically, and you want to maximize that. 

    There is a big focus within Sabre at Sabre Hospitality on retailing and merchandizing, and they’re developing a product called Retail Studio, which is helping hotels to do that. If you bring that same logic over to the Sabre side, we want to make that easier for the travel agencies to do that as well. We are coming up with some new APIs for the first time where things like interconnecting rooms and booking multiple rooms will become easier. That will appeal to the leisure travel agencies as well. 

    If the hotels have inventory they want to provide, we would love to pass that on the travel agency community. The next couple of years, there will be some announcements to very easily aggregate restaurant reservation, banquet booking capabilities, group capabilities, etc. Our whole plan is to just build services for lodging as flexibly and in as modular a way as possible, so whatever the supply partners want to give us to pass on to the agency side and whatever the agency wants to book, we want to become a marketplace. Our dynamics with hotel partners are a little different than NDC and the airlines, and we’re a little bit ahead on working on those concepts.

    Content services for lodging is built in a very modular and flexible way, and we are opening up almost like a marketplace to partners who can work with our specifications. That makes it a lot easier for this ecosystem to work.”

    BTN: As you build these, will the technology largely be built internally, or will you be looking for external partners?

    Sharma: It’s a combination. We’re taking a very pragmatic approach, because any large company like ours has its own momentum. We have our product roadmap built, but we are working very actively with like-minded companies because we can only do so much in a certain amount of time, and if there is a market need, then we are flexible to partner with companies that can integrate into our solutions. The good thing is, content services for lodging is built in a very modular and flexible way, and we are opening up almost like a marketplace to partners who can work with our specifications and be available in that marketplace. That makes it a lot easier for this ecosystem to work, so that it doesn’t completely depend only on our speed and adding solutions. We can make it a little broader. 

    BTN: As you seek to broaden your footprint, are any particular geographies first on your agenda?

    Sharma: We’re already a very global company, but we’re very heavily penetrated and mature in the North American market. All the growing markets are of interest to us. The natural areas where we’ll focus first is Europe, because that’s relatively well-developed and has a very synergistic effect with North America because of the travel corridors. We’re generating a lot of interest in Latin America and Asia-Pacific as well. We will follow wherever the travel agency community wants us to, because that’s our primary customer. Everything we do is for the managed travel category, and wherever they have needs, we will continue to solve them. 

    Even though there is a big focus on lodging, we are simultaneously working on ground services and car rentals and rail as well. We recently announced a partnership with Trainline to get new content for our partners, and it’s very relevant for the European market. It’s also very environmentally friendly. Probably all customers are becoming more conscious, but especially in Europe, rail is a part of life, so we do want to expand our services so we eventually have that complete trip in mind. 

    Whatever confidence you need to make the complete trip or the travel agency work, we will continue to add those. Over a period of time, this could include mobility, ground transportation, airport pickup, restaurant reservation, etc. We will be driven by the travel advisors. Whatever they want us to build, we are a tech platform that can make it happen.

    BTN: Are multimodal comparisons a priority?

    Sharma: Yes, because Sabre luckily has all the travel companies already in the system, and we want to expose the best possible fare options and choices to the travel advisors. Sometimes, the limitations or the specifications come from the travel agencies because they want to see results in a certain way. Where we have the flexibility to give them more possibilities, we’re already doing it. Sabre has a proprietary tool called [Sabre Red] 360, which is the agent point of sale, and that’s where we’re doing a lot of innovation, of normalizing the content so we can serve it in a bite-sized way.

    We have a long-standing relationship with Google, so we’re developing some new products broadly under the travel AI category. Specifically for lodging, we have a solution called Lodging AI, which does very simple things for the travel agency community but is very intuitive. If they are booking a hotel that is not available, how do you recommend them hotels that make sense? If you forgot to attach a hotel in an airline booking, how do you make that recommendation in a very intuitive way? 

    The demographic of the advisory community is also changing, so a lot of younger advisors are coming on board. They don’t like the command prompts anymore. They like a graphic user stream. The content needs to be consumer-grade, so we’re spending a lot of time and effort making sure we get all the visual content the right way and we surface it the right way to the consumers, because it has to be nearly the same B-to-C grade in the new world we have. If there are 35,000 options available, how do you show 25 relevant options?

    BTN: What are the challenges you see specific to rail content?

    Sharma: Our strategy is that at least with the key rail suppliers, we want to have direct relationships and direct APIs. So, with partners like Amtrak and [France’s] SNCF we have our own connectivity. In markets where we can bring that content faster, we will partner with those partners like Trainline. Our approach is that we want to look at all our travel competence and how we can add value. If you just look at rail or car rental alone, then it doesn’t look that significant. It’s almost like table stakes for that company to have it. We will always stay invested in making sure that any requirements the travel agency community have, we are able to add value and solve that. Rail in particular is a little more challenging because it’s more fragmented and there are reasonable answers, but at least right now we are solving a big part of that. Just like we had an integration with Trainline, we continually look at partners that can bring in new content and solve problems for the advisors. 

    BTN: What about sustainability data for hotel and ground?

    Sharma: It’s becoming increasingly important. It’s becoming a major factor in how the rates are being procured and the RFP process, because corporations are becoming more sensitive to approving suppliers who are eco-friendly. Our role as a travel platform is to make sure whatever content we service for the advisor community should have the right labels and right logos. We are working very actively to see how best we can service travel options that are more eco-friendly. 

    Our focus on rail and Trainline is very similar, because some of the countries in Europe are moving in the direction where they might mandate travel within two hours be done on rail, and a lot of hotel companies are very focused on the eco-friendly aspect as well. Our challenge, and opportunity, is that we have more than a million hotels on the platform, and we need to standardize how we service that through the travel community, so it’s not apples and oranges. If it’s a LEED-certified hotel, how do we display it on the search result and give it a little bit of a bias so the agency community can select it. We are developing our content APIs in such a way that any information on certification or being eco-friendly is able to be displayed on the end screen, and that’s a role we have to play, and that’s how we will make it more available in the ecosystem.

    [ad_2]

    mbaker@thebtngroup.com (Michael B. Baker)

    Source link