Why say something in 100 words when we can sum it up in just a few: all we want to do is offer you a seamless end-to-end journey from the time you book your trip to the time you’re safely back home. It can be challenging to find the best deal for your hotel accommodation.
Every search can mean trawling through four or five different websites, calling hotels directly, cross checking and double checking before finally making a booking – all the time hoping no mistakes are made with all these manual tasks. After all this, you end up with flights, hotels and cars all sold through different channels. This means that if anything goes wrong, you’ll need to contact multiple suppliers and you’ll be faced with complicated reconciliation work with multiple records on multiple systems for just one trip.
IT’S A COMPLEX ECOSYSTEM
As the hospitality sector is experiencing both consolidation and a multiplication of distribution channels, the hotel business is set to grow by 4.9% in global business travel spend in 2019. Approximately 550,000 new hotel rooms are projected in 2019 and hotel rates are expected to rise by 3.7% globally (Source: GBTA).
The corporate traveller is evolving too – and times are changing fast. Business travellers’ expectations are being shaped by their leisure experiences. Travellers have become more empowered and demanding than ever before. They want choice, transparency in pricing and personalisation, whether travelling for business or leisure. Shopping around has become the norm.
What if we could tell you that you can shop around and browse multiple hotels on one platform with your trusted travel management company?
SIMPLIFY YOUR BOOKING EXPERIENCE WITH AMADEUS HOTELS
The Amadeus Hotel platform offers an extensive breadth and depth of choice in hotel accommodation. We remove the complexity, cost and inconvenience of having to shop multiple websites and booking systems by offering a wide variety of properties from combined sources, available to book in real time through one centralised content platform.
This Amadeus Platform allows your travel agent to access GDS hotel content (both hotel chains and independent hotels), plus hotels aggregators and Amadeus Value Hotels (Amadeus’ own aggregator), in the same front office platform (either in Amadeus Selling Platform Connect or in their own front office throughAmadeus web services).
With full integration of all hotel booking data to mid and back-office systems, your travel agency will have better visibility and tracking capabilities on true hotel spend at agency, corporate client or individual traveller level.
“At Amadeus, we believe there is significant fragmentation in the way South African TMCs and corporations book their hotel content. The Amadeus Hotel Platform solves this problem by allowing to book the existing sources of content as well as incremental sources under the same booking screen. This adds fantastic efficiency to the TMCs and reduces the probability that hotel reservations are closed outside the TMC environment. Agencies that are taking full advantage of the Amadeus Hotel Platform are showing more than 50% of their PNRs with a hotel reservation included, and we think this number can still be improved,” says Vicente Bosque, Commercial Director – Business Travel Africa, Amadeus.
AND SO MUCH MORE…
The acquisition of TravelClick, Inc., a leading global IT provider that serves more than 25,000 customers across 176 countries, marked an important step in the hospitality sector for us at Amadeus. We have a portfolio of innovative solutions serving hotels and chains of all sizes worldwide. This acquisition enhances our presence in the hospitality industry, not only broadening our portfolio, but also our know-how and global presence. TravelClick provides innovative cloud-based solutions, including an independent and mid-size hotel Central Reservation System (CRS) and Guest Management Solution (GMS), as well as business intelligence and media solutions.
Our new distribution agreement with Booking.com will boost our accommodation content by 30%. No matter how and where travellers shop, they want greater choice and convenience when booking a trip. Every day 1.5 million room nights are reserved across 228 countries and territories worldwide via the Booking.com platform. Thanks to a new partnership between our two companies, travel sellers will now access the vast and rich content of the company’s extensive listings. This includes everything from hotels, motels and resorts to homes, apartments and many other unique places to stay provided by Booking.com through the Amadeus Travel Platform.
Amadeus Value Hotels is our net rate hotel program, giving your travel consultant even more choice when booking hotels for you. As today’s travellers demand choice and value for money, Amadeus Value Hotels ensures you, as the customer, will get a wide variety of accommodation options at the best possible price. What’s more, there’s no sign-up charge. In fact, we recently successfully launched Amadeus Value Hotels in South Africa earlier this year.
“Amadeus Value Hotels is great for several reasons, the first being that it’s so easy and straightforward to use. The product also provides great customer service – if a booking needs amending or cancelling you can just give them a call and they will resolve it quickly. One of the most beneficial aspects of it is that the rates are really competitive compared to other systems we have used in the past,” say Latisha Calland, Reservations Co-ordinator at Insight Booking Solutions Limited.
Hotels and accommodation should be on every business travel agent’s agenda. Why?
Business travel is inherently valuable, generating over €1.3 trillion for the global economy in 2018 and growing at 7% per annum. In today’s global economy, business travel is a strategic necessity in making organisations successful.
The hospitality sector is one of the most dynamic segments of the travel industry and continues to evolve. Twenty years ago, guests came to expect bathrobes in their hotel rooms, mini-bars, and hair dryers. Now they expect super-fast wi-fi, the latest tech in rooms, modern design, and personalised service.
The rise of smartphones and social media, combined with technological amenities like AI-enabled chatbots and in-room technology, make it ever more likely that guests of the future will place much higher demands on the travel and hospitality industry.
At every stage of a journey – from booking agents to airports, hotels, meetings, restaurants and visitor attractions – no detail can be overlooked in the race for rich experiences. More than ever, the human touch of hospitality and travel consultants must be integrated with technological innovation – be it devices, platforms or applications – needed to meet modern consumer expectations.
WANT TO HEAR MORE?
Contact your trusted Travel Management Company or your Amadeus sales representative now.