San Diego—The
Global Business Travel Association's hotel committee has developed a rate-loading
instruction document that major travel management companies have agreed to use
as standard for the 2014 request-for-proposals season.
The document, now published on the GBTA Hub, will provide an
"industry standard" in communicating instructions to hotels for
loading corporate negotiated rates, hotel committee member and BCD Travel senior
manager of global distribution Tracie Moreland said on Monday during an educational
session at GBTA's 2013 annual convention here. The major TMCs have agreed to
replace any documents they currently use with the new form, she said.
As a result, hotels will be able to further automate the rate-loading
process, according to Moreland.
Hotels "are receiving so many documents in so many
different formats that they have to transpose that information into their own
format in order for their systems to load those rates," she said. "By
the TMCs putting together the rate-loading instructions and using one
standardized format, they should be able to skip one of those processes once
that form gets into action."
One critical field for the document is a "suggested
rate plan name," which Moreland said should reduce the chance of companies
getting multiple access codes from hotels. For example, a company with one
division that submits as "Company XYZ" on one form and has another
division submit as "Company XYZ, Inc." on another could inadvertently
trigger a second rate access code, she said.
Additionally, the committee pared down the fields on the
form, leaving in only "imperative information," Moreland said. As
such, International Air Transport Association numbers are not included on the
form.
"We do realize that hotels use this IATA number for a
variety of reasons, and it's important that you get that information, but not
in the rate-loading process, as it's not needed for the actual rate loading,"
she said.