<B> Hilton Inks Direct Links</B>
<I>Buyers Get Web Booking, Data Capture</I>
By Maria P. Vallejo
Corporate buyers who have been pioneering the concept of direct Internet-based hotel booking with Hilton Hotels Corp. claim that such links are maintaining rate integrity, driving compliance and accurately capturing spending volume.
In the past few months, several buyers have joined Hilton's effort to provide complimentary customized Web pages linked to corporate intranets that offer preferred rate booking ability, site plans for meetings planners, specific property information, mapping capabilities, profile update pages and Hilton Honors members program updates. These Direct Links Websites carry data for every Hilton Hotels and Hilton International property with which an individual corporation has preferred vendor arrangements.
Today, ten companies have installed Direct Links, and the original beta test customer, brokerage firm Charles Schwab & Co. Inc. of San Francisco, is planning further enhancements.
Before it installed Direct Links in 1996, almost half of Charles Schwab's travelers booked their hotel reservations directly with a property, making it impossible to track them, said director of corporate travel Bob Grant. The project helped Schwab move more travelers into the self-service, electronic travel process that handles 80 percent of its transactions. Schwab spends about $1 million a year in transient travel business at Hilton.
"These people were wasting time looking for a hotel number and booking a room and getting or not getting the preferred rate-- and I had to fix that," Grant said. "Now I'm guaranteed that our rates are applied, and it's one more transaction I don't have to handle."
Schwab travelers enter the corporate intranet site where they click onto a Hilton icon that transports them to a customized Web page. There, they can view the company's preferred Hilton properties and make bookings in real time. The Website recognizes them as Schwab travelers and automatically gives them their preferred rate, while also offering lower rates associated with special promotions.
Schwab's preferred rate is applicable in many cases until the last room at a property is sold. If travelers cannot receive a room at the preferred rate despite the guarantee of last-room availability, they contact Grant.
While the assurance of preferred rate bookings is enough to move some travel buyers to install Direct Links, Grant said the program also improves compliance and negotiations. The Website, linked to Schwab's corporate intranet, helps keep compliance high by dissuading travelers from booking with other properties that might not be part of Schwab's hotel program. Instead, they are drawn by the convenience of booking directly at their laptops or desktops, leading to increased usage of Hilton properties.
"If travelers find they can book a hotel themselves and do it very quickly, it works to improve compliance," Grant said. "It's doing what I want travelers to do anyway--putting them in our preferred properties. I want them to stay in Hilton Hotels."
While Schwab is not directly tracking its travelers' bookings through the Website, Hilton is. It follows the business and comes to the negotiating table with updated information. At times, Hilton has tracked a higher volume of business than Schwab initially had forecast, which has helped Schwab get improved deals.
Experiencing the clear benefits of Direct Links, Grant plans to meet with Hilton officials this month to discuss expanding the customized Website to include contracts and registration pages for groups and meetings, Grant said. Currently, travel for meetings and special events is handled separately from transient business.
The Website also may include announcements of special group deals that result from last-minute meeting cancellations at Hilton properties, giving Schwab's meeting planners easy access to discounts on distressed merchandise.
Other companies are taking advantage of Direct Links without using its booking component. Five months ago, Oracle Corp., based in Redwood Shores, Calif., added Direct Links to its corporate intranet, through a program Oracle offers that allows preferred vendors to build customized Web pages, or to have Oracle design a link to the vendor's home page.
At this point, Oracle has declined to use the booking component, saying that it wants its employees to book all travel through Rosenbluth, its preferred agency, so it can track the data. Oracle also plans to roll out an electronic booking product, which it likely will choose this month.
"Right now we don't want them to book our reservations. We've asked them to put this in for rate purposes only," said Katey Flanagan, Oracle's project manager for technology solutions.
The company uses the customized site to list its preferred hotels, provide rates in real time and check Hilton Honors profiles, Flanagan said.
"What we're experiencing today is that many travel departments are just beginning to tackle the Internet issue with their travel departments," said Kevin Kelly, Hilton's managing director of worldwide business travel sales. "Booking through the Internet or intranet is the way of the future. We'll probably have every one of our corporate customers linked when the world goes more toward the technology side. It's only going to increase.