Hospitality resevation and distribution specialist Trust International is two weeks away from connecting to Room Key, the online hotel venture started by a number of hotel chains in January.
Trust boss Richard Wiegman says his company is the first computer reservation system to hook up with Room Key, which was formed by big name hotel chains including Hilton and Marriott as a hotel metasearch mega-platform.
Speaking at a Tnooz Hotel 3.0 session at ITB in Berlin, Wiegman also says he tested the water about Room Key among a group of consultants who thought the venture would find a niche in the market for hotels without a lot of technology support.
He adds that Trust is currently building a link to the online service and that members are supportive if it means lower commission rates.
The company was also the first CRS to work with Google on its Hotel Finder service with about a third of its 6,500 properties included in the initial pilot.
Of Google's foray into travel, Wiegman says:
"We welcome them into the space. Is Hotel Finder new? No, because all the hotels were Google customers before but it's a new product, the perfect starting point and the beauty for the hotels is that even though Google is a sort of intermediary the booking ends up on the hotel website."
Remko West, co-founder of Xotels and also a member of the Hotel 3.0 panel in Berlin, says Google has enormous potential to upset the hotel distribution model but has concerns over the viability of Room Key.
These concentrate mostly on potential costs to hoteliers to participate and attracting traffic.