Travelocity Business Debuts Hotel Rate-Loading Compliance Tools

Travelocity Business today introduced two automated tools aimed at ensuring corporate travelers book the correct negotiated hotel rates. The first functionality, known as the hotel audit tool, confirms that negotiated hotel rates with suppliers appear correctly in global distribution systems. The second capability, called the "squatter" tool, crosschecks bookings against negotiated rates within GDSs to better regulate the use of approved rates. The tools also can benchmark data against other rates and perform scheduled, periodic audits.

Bradley Seitz, president and CEO of auditing and consulting firm Topaz International, has not tested the new tools, but called them interesting—provided the claims are accurate. "If you're dealing with a finite number of hotels in terms of a preferred hotel program, you may have multiple, seasonal rates within those properties," Seitz said. "It's probably straightforward programming to go out and say, 'For these properties in this GDS, probably in a few pseudo-cities, it will reduce the chance for errors.' If it works, it'll be pretty cool."

The technology is an offering of Travelocity Business' consulting arm and is available to all market sizes, though the automation specifically provides a value-add to large and midmarket companies, said Joel Bailey, director of product marketing at the online-originating travel management company. "This is really beneficial to companies who put the investment in having a very comprehensive hotel program," Bailey said. "If a company has potentially thousands of hotels in a negotiated program, trying to manually audit all thousand-plus hotels can be incredibly time-consuming. It gives assurance that everything is loaded without having to invest human time, check every single property and make sure it's loaded for the right date range."

DeAnne Dale, Travelocity Business vice president of consulting services, said the products were beta-tested for about eight weeks with one client who has about $9 million to $10 million in hotel spend. "We conducted one audit to date and with very good results," she said. "What would normally take us about 72 man-hours took us 11 minutes." Dale said the move is a preview of future features that use technology to influence behavior.