Mobile technology and expanded content are creating a brave new hotel booking world
Ask a corporate travel manager what the most complicated aspect of the job is in the 21st century, and it’s a good bet that he or she will cite booking hotels. And it’s becoming increasingly more complex due to the growing number of different channels through which travelers are now encouraged to book.
It wasn’t too long ago that travel managers saw the consumerization of booking technology (hotels.com, booking.com, trivago, etc.) as a threat to control over the hotel spend. However, powerful tools have recently become available to help aggregate hotel inventory, present a wider range of options and capture the hotel spend data, which – in the right hands – can actually strengthen a hotel program by providing a more realistic starting point for negotiations.
There are far more choices involved in selecting a hotel room compared to purchasing a seat on an airplane, observes Scott Brennan, Carlson Wagonlit Travel’s president, hotels. More types of rooms, wider selection of brands, travel distance from the meeting or airport – all are considerations for the traveler.
“The client may also have a corporate negotiated rate in place with the property,” Brennan says. “At CWT we will offer the traveler the lowest priced options for the room, whether that is the ‘book direct’ loyalty rate, the corporate negotiated rate, or a CWT Value Rate.”
Will Pinnell, BCD Travel’s vice president, digital and product strategy, notes that most corporate booking tools are having to up their game to create the kind of experience that travelers get on the consumer side – a prerequisite if the corporate tool is going to be used consistently.
“When you look at how much corporate travel there is relative to how much share the corporate booking tools see, it’s a disproportionate amount of bookings going directly to leisure sites, whether OTAs or suppliers themselves,” Pinnell says. “Increasingly we see travelers are booking their air and hotels at different times. Our data suggests only 30 percent of travelers book both together now. The challenge is that they are not going back to the booking tool to do it, but are going to the OTAs, so that’s an opportunity we need to claw back to.”
For all booking tools – hotels especially – mobility and personalization are a couple of key trends, says Annicka Lofstrand, KDS’ director global suppliers.
“With mobility, I’m talking about access to all content – independent hotels, chains, B&B, apartments, etc. – bookable via the traveler’s mobile device or smartphone,” she says. “But as part of a travel management program, accommodations need to be fully integrated into the booking tool, so that all travel requirements are taken care of end-to-end, creating a smooth, seamless experience for the traveler and of course keeping duty of care intact for travel management.”
Two other trends that seem set to continue are the sharing economy and the mix of business and leisure – “bleisure” – trips. The rise of on-demand lodging options is driving online tools to find ways to provide access to this new content, while the combination of business and personal stays means hotel offerings and booking must be better at seamlessly catering to both the business traveler and leisure traveler in the same trip. And all of this in the context of the same corporate online solutions.
Mobile FirstWhen it comes to hotels, according to Suzanne Neufang, VP of Americas for HRS, booking in the corporate channels is still all about compliance, relevance and choice, with mobile being the most rapidly evolving trend.
“We see about a third of all of our bookings happening within three days before travel and this is where mobile comes up; it’s been doubling for us year over year, especially over the last couple of years,” she says. “Having a policy-enabled mobile booking tool at a traveler’s fingertip helps make available a pool of corporate rates that the corporation has negotiated, and also makes all of the other compliant hotels and their programs available to them.”
The biggest impact on hotel booking comes from the consumerization of tools and the need to marry technology to the experience, notes Kiran Narahari, director of global product for Egencia, a TMC and online booking tool.
“It’s all about bringing consistency to the experience and making sure that regardless of the device a customer is using – whether it’s mobile or desktop –they have access to tools that they need to make a decision,” he says. “You also have to have personalization, making the experience relevant to the traveler so that we’re providing content and information that they can use more quickly to make a decision.”
Michael Strauss, CEO of PASS Consulting and head of the Business Unit Travel worldwide, says it doesn’t make sense to use different tools for different trip portions. “With regard to the hotel piece of the OBT (Online Booking Tool), the challenge in most cases is that GDS data is not the best data when it comes to hotels.”
Strauss explains there are other players whose content is more attractive – especially on the open market (e.g. Expedia, Booking.com, e-hotel). Then the OBT may have different content sources, with a preferred rate for hotels in the GDS versus regular rates in other sources which might be better. But the preferred rate may include amenities like WiFi and breakfast, etc.
“For a machine to compare this all broken down to a certain room type and present this to the traveler with as little options as necessary within an acceptable amount of time is almost an impossible challenge to solve,” he says. “Some call this de-duping of hotel content. Some providers claim to have solved this problem, but I have not seen it working consistently yet. If you include another specialized third party, you end up paying more, which may also not be ideal.”
A Changing EnvironmentTechnology – particularly the near-ubiquitous use of smartphones – has given more and more travelers the power to manage their entire journey via mobile devices and preferred apps, from search and booking through on-trip assistance, even including expense management and reconciliation.
Therefore when travelers book their corporate trip through the company’s preferred online tool, they expect their connection between apps and devices to be similarly seamless.
“Hotels and accommodation providers are tapping into this, providing more post-booking solutions directly to the traveler via mobile devices, such as mobile check-in, pre-ordering of services and facilities available based on user preferences or previous stays,” Lofstrand says. “Virtual payment and e-receipts linked directly to the company expense tool have also become more widespread in the last couple of years.”
Today’s savvy travel manager needs make sure travelers have access to the content that they, the travelers, want to use, while staying within policy, so negotiated rates and special services are easily found and fully visible on the chosen booking tool. At the same time, content needs to take into account the all-important Duty of Care aspect for the traveler.
“With the right online booking tool in place, travel managers do not need to know all the hotel booking tools in the market; they just need to ensure that the content travelers want to access and they wish to use can be accessed via their corporate online program,” Lofstrand says. “In this way, it is a win-win for both the travel manager and the traveler – the travel manager keeps control of their program, and the end user can access the content or hotel accommodation they wish to use.”
Brennan points out that CWT has been improving the booking experience CWT to Go, and has begun using hotel loyalty points to give travelers the incentive to stay with a brand that is within their company’s travel policy.
“We call that ‘Loyalty Booster by CWT’ and expect that this will both improve traveler satisfaction as well as compliance,” he says. “The traveler will earn all the same loyalty benefits and points they would have earned booking directly with the hotel chain, plus even more loyalty points for booking through CWT. We are working with our OBT partners to enable Loyalty Booster by CWT through that channel as well.”
It’s a relatively easy program for the travel manager to navigate. There is no incremental cost for the company, plus travelers will see that certain brands or properties offering incremental bonus points at the same rates they would have paid without the bonus points.
“The traveler will receive the same underlying benefits that would have been included in the selected rate – it just adds extra loyalty points,” Brennan says. “The included amenities will vary based on type of room selected and rate type.”
Ian Knox, Egencia’s senior director of global product, explains the company’s online booking tool enables the market to compete, which is a very different philosophy from many other products.
“Travel managers will put their negotiated rates in, but then will let every rate in the industry compete with those rates,” he explains. “What we find is in some cases they may have a chain-wide discount, but rates available from consumer sites will beat those, so that’s a great way to bring their cost down. We tailor our experience to the needs of the travel program. For instance, we can load in custom destinations for the offices worldwide, so as a user engages with the tool it personalizes in some way.”
Pinnell reports that BCD Travel is building its own online booking tool, called TripSource Hotel, in an effort to mirror the experience one would get on a kayak or airbnb or booking.com.
“These are primarily mobile first and designed to provide travelers with a lot of different options,” he says. “We want to ensure that regardless of where those travelers are booking, even if outside the program, we have ways the traveler can forward the itinerary to us so we can include that for the travel manager.”
Money MattersWith fenced rates or member-only rates becoming more common these days, Knox says Egencia has access to every rate imaginable, including all the published rates, negotiated rates and Egencia performance rates.
“We try and tailor those rates to what our traveler is looking for,” he says. “So for instance, if someone has a brand affinity and we learn about that, we make it very clear that there may be a multipoint rate that they want to choose. If they don’t care about some brands we may show cheaper rates of independent hotels. So essentially, over time we’re learning about the traveler and the rates they pick. Our goal is to give the traveler what they want, but also to bring their overall cost of the travel program down.”
Lofstrand believes that spot pricing or best available rate are cheaper than negotiated rates. However, she says, negotiated rates, which are often not fixed at all, may be preferable where the company has negotiated additional services as part of the deal, e.g., breakfast included, free upgrade, flexible cancellation, etc.
“What is included is rarely fixed,” she says. “Companies can negotiate to have the services included as part of their deal that their users find important. For example, they can tailor and personalize the services to suit their corporate need.”
Neufang notes that data, tracking, measuring and being able to identify your key objectives are all vital elements in your program. Beyond that, it’s important to rank those and set up policy in any hotel booking tool accordingly.
“What I often see is the mistake of saying that compliance is basically a book of corporate negotiated rated hotels and nothing else,” Neufang says. “I think what is being left on the table are alternative hotels in the same part of town that because they are looking to earn a corporate visit might actually have a five or 10, or 20 percent discount on a rate and delight the traveler with a very personalized experience. In another case, it may be that those rates may not be available at those negotiated properties. Then basically the traveler has no choice but to go outside of the compliance booking channels and go book on their own.”
There have certainly been more market entrants in the hotel distribution space in the past few years, which means consumer and leisure travelers have more ways to book hotels.
That’s why it’s important for travel programs to continue to look to improve the hotel selection and shopping experience, helping travel managers motivate the right behaviors with positive reinforcement and offer travelers value they literally can’t get if they book outside of the preferred hotels or channels.
“Travel managers and travelers will continue to demand access to more content and require their corporate online solution to keep up with this demand,” Lofstrand says. “The demand for access to more and better content from various sources is higher today than ever before.”