Travelport industry first: 97% compliance in new streamlining process for hotel negotiated rates

• proactively conducting rate audits with hotel suppliers
• designing and implementing new processes
• removing the availability of outdated and duplicated codes
• streamlining the process for hotels to upload their negotiated rates

According to external research from CWT Solutions Group, up to 25% of hotel negotiated rates are incorrectly uploaded – or not loaded at all – at initial audit. The main reasons for this include:

• the hotel’s failure to load the data into the Property Management System (PMS) or Central Reservation System (CRS)
• the rate not being set up correctly or missing/inaccurate code information – as many codes are outdated and duplicated
• multiple processes for uploading data

Travelport has already seen supplier compliance rise from less than 80% to more than 97% and the programme, which initially kicked off in the US and Canada, will be deployed globally later in the year.

Keith Harrison, Global Head of Hospitality Suppliers, Travelport, says of the initiative:  “Travelport’s holistic approach is an industry-first – no other GDS has made concrete progress in efforts to tackle this challenge to date.  Some of the positive changes we’ve introduced include building a feedback process, asking hotel chains to put service level agreements in place with local properties and increasing the frequency of updates in the Travelport GDS channel.  As a result, agents using Travelport will have more confidence in serving their customers as per their negotiated contracts, compared with other channels and GDSs.”

Miguel Marquez, Director of Operations, Montrose Travel adds:  “We are very pleased that Travelport has taken the initiative to address the issue of hotel negotiated rates.  Streamlining the process of rate loading will be beneficial to everyone in the industry: GDSs, hotels and travel agents alike.”

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About Travelport (www.travelport.com)
Travelport is a broad-based business services company and a leading provider of critical transaction processing solutions to companies operating in the global travel industry.

With a presence in over 170 countries, approximately 3,500 employees and 2011 net revenue of $2.0 billion, Travelport is comprised of the global distribution systems (GDS) business, which includes the Galileo and Worldspan brands and its Airline IT Solutions business.

Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, Travelport is a privately owned company.
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Kate Aldridge
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