Global hotel solutions provider HRS is doubling down on its efforts to keep incorrect hotel rates from impacting travel programs by adding a rate-filtering service to its Rate Protector suite.
HRS launched corporate rate auditing tool Rate Protector in spring 2017. It ensures that availability terms, amenities, price and other factors match negotiated terms. HRS VP of product development and innovation Martin Biermann said Rate Protector—which works on a continuous, real-time basis—successfully increased the frequency with which rates coming in from distribution channels are correct from 80 percent to 90 percent.
But, Biermann said, that still left 10 percent of rates that were incorrect and reaching the traveler. “Some companies are providing compliance services which are trying to fix the problem later on by actually canceling a booking and then moving the booking to another property that has the right negotiated rates available,” he said. “We found this is kind of counterintuitive for the traveler: to go into the preferred booking channel, make a booking and then figure out afterwards, ‘Whoops I actually booked an incorrect rate.’” Instead, Biermann said, travelers shouldn’t have to think about it and corporates shouldn’t have to pay the fees for rebookings.
HRS’s rate filtering add-on moves the process up the chain, identifying and correcting rates in real time before they reach the global distribution systems, online booking tools and other shopping channels and, ultimately, the traveler. Driving the service on the back end is natural language processing artificial intelligence, which tackles issues around data inconsistencies. HRS connects to multiple GDSs, more than 120 channel managers and dozens of hotel chains. “All the systems needed to be trained to analyze anything from very structured data from various hotel chain connects down to what the GDSs provide, which is usually using a lot of abbreviations,” Biermann said. “It’s very often just one text field full of data about the rate that you see—so breakfast, for example, being abbreviated to BFST.” Content also can come in more than 40 languages. The natural language processing helps the system recognize all those quirks in the content.
HRS also is providing a Rate Protector dashboard to help clients see where and how often their rates are being filtered out and learn why, from the global level down to the property level. HRS found that using rate filtering as part of Rate
Protector 2.0 enables corporates to recoup on average 2.8 percent of the savings they
originally negotiated with properties. For large multinationals, those savings
add up to significant dollars, according to HRS VP of the Americas and managing
director of North America Suzanne Neufang.
“We’ve talked about leakage in the hotel space for years. That typically means something about leakage of attachment rates. What’s happening here is leakage within the ability to get a negotiated rate,” said Neufang. “Now we’re closing the circle on savings that you thought you negotiated that you’re actually getting back into your program.”
The Rate Protector suite is fully configurable for corporates, and rate filtering is available at no cost to HRS clients that use its sourcing and single-source hotel booking solutions.