BridgeStreet Global Hospitality says its development of an online travel agency for corporate travellers aims to bridge the gap between extended stay and peer-to-peer accommodation.
The company is claiming a first on the corporate-travel focused OTA, unveiled during the Business Travel Show in London this week.
BridgeStreet CEO Sean Worker confirmed the company would act as the merchant of record with the OTA as opposed to travellers being handed off elsewhere.
Once a booking is made, travellers will also be informed who will welcome them at the accommodation.
Worker says the development has been three years in the making and is seeking to aggregage content for corporate travellers and buyers as well as give suppliers a route to market.
He adds that integration of suppliers has been a huge part of the development to make the process easier. The OTA has also already integrated with the global distribution systems and channel managers Cubilis and Rate Tiger with two more to follow shortly.
The OTA also fulfills spend visibility and duty of care requirements by only working with "servied apartment operators", vetting all properties before they're made available and, enabling travel managers to load corporate policy into the system.
BridgeStreet says it has commitments from 900 suppliers to make their content accessible in real-time via the OTA.
This is not the first move by the company to marry peer-to-peer accommodation with corporate travel. It formed a partnership to place its serviced apartments on Airbnb about 18 months ago.
Worker says the company hopes to tap into the growing number of small and one-person companies looking for ways to keep their costs down.