How to Automate Hotel Re-Shopping with Rate Optimiser

Estimated Reading Time: 4 Minutes

Never accept a first offer, right? Hotel re-shopping – which you might know as ‘price assurance’ or ‘rate shopping’ – is the process of searching for the same hotel booking at a better rate.

A ‘better’ rate doesn’t necessarily have to mean a lower rate. It might be exactly the same as your existing booking, but with additional amenities included – which will delight travellers. Or it might provide an enhanced commission rate – which will delight your leadership.

Whatever ‘better’ looks like for you, finding these rates can be a somewhat haphazard process, requiring hours of manual effort. Searching sources for different rates. Cancelling previous bookings. Rebooking at a new rate. And all within the cancellation deadline window.

But all that extra work can be a thing of the past with automated hotel booking tools like Rate Optimiser doing the job for you.

Introduction to Rate Optimiser

HotelHub’s Rate Optimiser is a fully automated hotel re-shopping tool. Using advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technology, Rate Optimiser scours GDS and non-GDS sources for the optimum hotel rate to suggest to your team – eliminating the need for manual price checks.

Rate Optimiser can search out a range of alternative rate options, including

• a lower rate for the same booking
• a lower rate but with different amenities or with an upgrade
• the same rate or higher (up to a pre-set price) with better amenities
• rates with better commission.

It’s incredibly powerful, smart and capable, but offers you full control. You can sit back, relax and let it go to work, doing everything for you automatically. Or you can closely monitor it and sign off on any cancellation and rebooking activity before it happens.

It’s a real game changer for travel management companies and their clients.

How does it work?

TMCs using Rate Optimiser can start enjoying optimised rates in just a few simple steps.

1. Set up

Set your preferred Rate Optimiser rules for each client.

2. Book hotel

Create a new booking in HotelHub (or on the GDS) as normal.

3. Re-shopping begins

Let Rate Optimiser go to work. You won’t have to do anything – it’s fully automated.

4. Notification sent

You’ll get a notification when a better rate or a better deal is found. If you choose to rebook, Rate Optimiser will do all the work from here on.

5. Rebooking

All details are transferred over to the new booking, without any manual intervention.

6. Cancellation

Once the rebooking is confirmed, the old booking is cancelled – this is triggered automatically. Cancellations will only occur within the free cancellation period, incurring no further expenses.

Check out the video below to see it in action:

Key features

• Create tailored re-shopping rules for each TMC customer.
• Set commission rules that automatically shop for better commission.
• Constantly scans up to the free cancellation deadline.
• Notifications can be sent to dedicated email addresses defined by the TMC.
• Optional fully-automated rebooking, with all segment and remarks specifications.
• Optimised hits to downstream content channels.
• Built-in reporting for TMCs and leadership teams.
• Switch to specific room types, bed types and rate categories, as per client preferences.
• Addition of a breakfast buffer, to ensure that breakfast is taken into consideration before flagging a rate as a better rate.
• Shopping for bookings created outside the HotelHub platform.
• Opt out completely or re-shop in the background to gather data without sending notifications.
• Suppress duplicate notifications when the same rate is identified multiple times.

Your behind-the-scenes assistant

With Rate Optimiser, hotels can be re-shopped automatically. Whenever you make a hotel booking in HotelHub with Rate Optimiser integrated, the algorithm continuously scans content sources for price drops or better amenities for the same rate. But there’s more going on behind the scenes than it first appears…

• Rate Optimiser identifies rates that match your clients’ preferred upgrade or downgrade requirements– and this can be specific to each client.
• It will only act or notify you if a better deal below your price threshold is found within the cancellation period, sparing your team the hassle of useless notifications.
• The auto-rebook feature can be toggled to trigger an instant cancellation booking and rebooking, instantly transferring the booking details over to your new rate in HotelHub.
• Your original booking will be automatically cancelled once it has been rebooked – without any manual intervention from your team other than a notification to confirm the action is authorised.

Benefits for travel management companies

Rate Optimiser can help TMCs vastly improve customer satisfaction and commission levels, with higher productivity per employee.

The tool also generates savings reports that you can send to clients periodically, showcasing the value your team is adding to their business travel bookings.

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