Travelport has taken steps to increase the availability of negotiated hotel rates in its system.
The travel technology company, which operates the Galileo and Worldspan GDSs, cited external research from Carlson Wagonlit Travel (CWT) as revealing that up to 25% of hotel negotiated rates are incorrectly uploaded, or not loaded at all. According to CWT, this is due to a number of factors including the hotels’ failure to load the data into the Property Management System (PMS) or Central Reservation System (CRS), the rate not being set up correctly or missing code information, or inaccurate code information being entered.
In an effort to solve this problem Travelport said it is working with hotels to streamline and simplify rate-loading processes. According to the company, this includes conducting rate audits with hotels, designing and implementing new processes and removing the availability of outdated and duplicated codes.
“Travelport’s holistic approach is an industry-first – no other GDS has made concrete progress in efforts to tackle this challenge to date,” said Keith Harrison, Travelport’s Global Head of Hospitality Suppliers. “Some of the positive changes we’ve introduced include building a feedback process, asking hotel chains to put service level agreements in place with local properties and increasing the frequency of updates in the Travelport GDS channel. As a result, agents using Travelport will have more confidence in serving their customers as per their negotiated contracts, compared with other channels and GDSs.”
Following the implementation of these processes, Travelport noted that it has seen compliance rise from less than 80% to more than 97%. The scheme, which kicked off in the US and Canada, will be rolled out globally later in the year.
