This is a roundup of product news and announcements for travel SYSTEMS in tourism and hospitality for April 2015.
Tuesday 28 April 2015:
Nor1 signs Wyndham Hotel Group for pre-arrival ancillaries
- The hotel chain, part of Wyndham Worldwide, will use the Nor1 eStandby Upgrade platform as part of the agreement. The system will allow hotels to offer personalised offers to guests, using data from the reservation system and dynamic pricing based on the paid room rate.
Kigo creates revenue management system for vacation rental owners
- The tool works as an automatic service for monitoring real-time rental rates based on seasonality demand. The idea is that it will allow rental owners to remove the need for manual analysis or rates, marker research, manage occupancy levels and revenue streams.
Wednesday 22 April 2015:Triptease partners with six hotel booking engines
- The provider of the Price Check service (a widget that sits on partner websites to show rates and availability of hotel properties) has secured deals with AvailPro, WebHotelier, Idiso, Simple Booking, Regatta Travel Solutions and BeBetter. The six brands will offer Price Check to their existing customers in a bid to provide real-time bookings to users.
WEX expands European currency offering
- The corporate payment system will now be able to issue and settle payments in 11 currencies through WEX Virtual Payments. The full sauite is now Australian Dollar, Danish Krone, New Zealand Dollar, Norwegian Krone, Polish Zloty, South African Rand, Swedish Krona, Swiss Franc, Euro, US Dollar and British Pound.
NetAffinity signs
Historic Hotels of Europe partnership
- the hotel group, which has more than 500 hotels across Europe, will integrate with NetAffinity's booking technology platform. The partnership will also include marketing services and the ability to connect to metasearch engines such as Google, Trivago and TripAdvisor.
Thursday 9 April 2015:TourConnect and Tourplan integrate
- The pair will combine their respective platforms to allow tour operators to handle bookings through a single management system. Tourplan’s tour operator customers will upload annual rates for suppliers who manage their rates with TourConnect. The first iteration of the system will be available for the 2016-2017 contracting season.
Monday 6 April 2015:Fastbooking inks Ctrip deal
- The agreement will give Fastbooking's hotel customers access to Chinese distribution via the Ctrip platform. Some 8,000 properties will be part of the partnership, aimed at tapping into the estimated $48 billion Chinese tourism sector in the next few years.
Lowcostbeds gets
Pyton integration
- The travel agent platform will get access to inventory provided by Lowcostbeds so hotels can be dynamically packaged alongside flights. Around 250,000 hotels worldwide will be included in the integration with the Waverunner Smart Sopping service.
Total Stay Group opts for
Triometric- TotalStay will use the Tripmetric Web Services Analyser software to understand performance behaviour across its accommodation wholesaler platform. The technology monitors XML traffic via APIs and analyses inventory and bookings flows.
Wyndham Hotel Group signs global reservation deal with
Sabre- The hotel chain will use Sabre's SynXis Central Reservation platform across its portfolio of properties and franchises. The deal started originally with a property management services agreement in 2014, but the next phase will see Sabre power all reservations around the world.
Thursday 2 April 2015:CheckMate, the on-demand solution for hotels, has partnered with Concur, the leading provider of travel expense management solutions,.
- CheckMate’s technology is now available to 30 million business travelers though the Concur App Center. CheckMate, a startup that has worked on consumer-side solutions with companies like Expedia Inc, also announced direct relationships with several major Travel Management Companies (TMCs) including BCD Travel, Balboa Travel Management, Gant Travel, Merit Travel, Altour, Travelcuts, Travel Solutions by Campbell, CTM (Corporate Travel Management), and World Wide Travel Associates. CheckMate’s technology lets clients check in before they leave home, request their preferred room, get access to deals on upgrades, and be notified once their room is ready.
Switzerland's hotel PMS
Base7booking has integrated with
PriceMatch, a hotel revenue management system based in Paris
- PriceMatch, which claims to be Europe’s fastest growing RMS, has done an XML integration with the Base7booking cloud-based PMS. It presents a cross-selling opportunity for Swiss independent hotels and resorts. Base7booking says it allows hotels to easily share their PMS data. See the Tnooz profile of Base7Booking and the Tnooz profile of PriceMatch.
Oyster, hotel reviews site, has tripled its inventory to 10,000 properties since its takeover by TripAdvisor
- Oyster's premise is that it has 50 independent individual experts reviewing hotels instead of a user-generated free-for-all. It claims content for more than 10,000 hotels across 76 countries and six continents. That is an addition of 7,000 properties since TripAdvisor snapped it up less than a year and a half ago. The site recently launched new panoramic HDR imagery. Oyster photos are available on TripAdvisor (under "Expert Photos").
Hotel WiFi Test launches a partner program for hotels
- HotelWifiTest is a website that rates the quality of hotel wifi. It has crowd-sourced results from more than 4,000 cities worldwide. Hotels can now sign up to generate many tests that are a prerequisite for a high Wi-Fi confidence and rank and that can lead to certification, as a way of promoting their property. Hotel WiFi Test provides each hotel a testing page with the sole purpose of testing the WiFi at their hotel. This page also suggests some pain-free integration options. No additional hardware is required for integration. Results are anonymous unless the hotel opts in.NB: Send links or releases related to travel systems directly to Tnooz via email.
NB2: Travel image via Shutterstock.