The client
A 60+-year-old leading digital travel management company (TMC) operating with 18,000+ travel professionals and managing over 100 corporate events per day. With a presence in over 160 countries, airline bookings were the mainstay of their business. Looking to plug the gap in missed hotel booking opportunities, they approached HotelHub to provide a solution.
Key challenges
Multiple manual processes
Labour intensive booking operations
Different platforms for GDS & non GDS listings
Missed booking opportunities
Industry background
Traditionally, TMC agents focus on what is more efficient to manage. Airline bookings are accessed through the GDS and are process-driven, therefore, the agent gets most of what’s needed in one place.
Hotel bookings often take longer. It involves the agent identifying a hotel booking opportunity for every airline booking, searching for hotels and the optimum rates, then making the hotel booking. Agents have to scour multiple platforms to search for the best and most relevant hotel rates. Given the time already spent on airline bookings, agents chose to pay attention to those bookings, leading to missed opportunities in hotel reservations.
The problem
Hotel bookings on the TMC’s existing system were managed through multiple GDS and non-GDS channels which meant manual back-and-forth for an agent between the channels to manage everything.
As a result, hotel bookings were low on the priority list because they were so time consuming and tedious. The TMC needed to increase agent productivity levels while booking hotels and tap into opportunities that were being missed.
Clearly, what the agent needed was a more efficient way to manage hotel bookings seamlessly between the channels and streamlined processes that would make it easy to tap into new hotel booking opportunities.
The HotelHub solution
HotelHub created a single platform that integrates all GDS and non-GDS hotel listings, bookings and management in one place.
- All hotel channels were made available on the HotelHub platform ensuring a streamlined process.
- As soon as an agent makes an airline reservation, the system automatically identifies hotel booking opportunities.
- Travel policies, filtered by TMC or client preferences, are configured in the system so that it only displays valid, in-policy booking opportunities.
- Paperwork is also automated, so the agent spends less time on manual processes.
- All active and passive segments of a PNR and accounting line remarks are automated to ensure all relevant data is captured.
- Payments, faxes and emails were also integrated into the system, creating a smooth and highly efficient experience for the agent.
Key achievements
Increased agent productivity
An intuitive and intelligent hotel booking solution and interface
The Result
Once the HotelHub platform was deployed across the TMC, agent productivity increased by an incredible 20% in a short space of time.
The TMC also saw a marked increase in hotel reservations attached to airline bookings as agents could easily identify opportunities with minimal effort.
Example testimonial eg Our sales team generated an additional 25% revenue within the first year of using HotelHub.
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Job Title,
AMEX Global Business Travel
