SINGAPORE, 26 September 2017: Travelport a leading travel commerce platform announced, Monday, it has negotiated rates at 1000 hotels, worldwide, for its corporate travel agency customers.
Located in 48 countries, participating hotels in the Travelport Exclusive Rates programme will offer negotiated rates with at least one added value element exclusive to the Travelport Travel Commerce Platform.
These offers are negotiated directly by Travelport, providing agencies that may not be able to secure special rates themselves, the benefit of Travelport’s scale and negotiating leverage.
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Accessed via the point-of-sale tool, Travelport Smartpoint, the exclusive rates can be found directly in the agent’s workflow, thereby saving time and increasing efficiency. While the focus is on areas that corporate travellers are most likely to travel to – primarily the main European cities – the programme also includes four and five-star hotels in Asia, USA, Africa and Latin America.
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When manually searching hotels and also using Travelport’s rate audit tool, Travelport’s exclusive rates have been found to be less expensive and contain more exclusive elements, such as breakfast, or more favourable cancellation terms, in 80% of the offers. In the other 20% of the searches, the hotel offered an enhanced commission for the booking agent, or other benefits that they could pass on to travellers.
However, it is not clear if the rates are better than the rates offered by OTAs. Booking direct with OTAs appeals to consumers who gain access to discounts that were previously offered only to travel agents based on allotments or annual volume and then marked up for the consumer.
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The popularity of OTAs has resulted in travel companies losing hotel booking revenue as consumers benefit from a wider choice and the convenience of immediate confirmation and online payments.
It will remain to be seen if Travelport’s Exclusive Rates are competitive.
They are available to B2B agencies on Travelport Apollo, Travelport Galileo, and Travelport Worldspan, and through a variety of Travelport point-of-sale products including Travelport Smartpoint and Travelport uAPI by adding the rate access code 4TM to a hotel search.
