In March of this year, hotel consultant Thibault Catala posted
on LinkedIn about his frustration in trying to help a new hotel in Greece become
listed on Expedia Group websites. Catala shared the response he received from
Expedia Group, which said that “due to the reduced demand for your market, we
will not be able to effectively support your business.”
Catala’s post generated more than 60 comments, some from
people who had similar experiences with Expedia and with other online travel agencies,
and many questioned whether pausing onboarding was a result of strategy or lack
of resources – or both.
When asked, Expedia Group vice president of market
management for North America, Rachel Bird, says via email: “We are still adding
properties to our site. However, we are carefully managing that process and
onboarding properties once conditions in their market are prime for them to
thrive. ... Our priority is ensuring that our travelers have sufficient choices
when searching for a destination, while also ensuring that lodging partners
that choose to work with us receive the type of bookings and guests that suit
their business needs.”
Catala – who is now in the process of getting the property
listed on Expedia Group - says he understands prioritizing existing customers,
but he also believes the pandemic has highlighted the need for more efficient
onboarding systems across all distribution stakeholders.
Some hospitality technology partners are working to address
this need.
SiteMinder has just launched a new package of automation
tools for its Little Hotelier brand, which provides a reservation and hotel
management system for small properties of about 30 rooms or fewer.
“One
of the biggest challenges for technology adoption in hotels has been the
complexity of bringing hotels online,” says SiteMinder CEO Sankar Narayan.
“We are
intending to bring the onboarding time from a matter of weeks to well within a
day. In fact if the hotelier has all the information ready, very soon the hotelier
will have full distribution within an hour.”
The product is available in the United States and the United
Kingdom and will soon be available in more markets. Hoteliers use an online
wizard to sign up and can get assistance through a chat function.
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Narayan says Little Hotelier Basics is just the first of
what will be a broad suite of automation products rolling out from SiteMinder
over the next few months for things such as revenue management, distribution
and group bookings.
“We are working on other automation solutions that really
reduce the burden on hotels large and small for them to be able to adopt,
embrace and really realize the full potential of technology,” he says.
“Launching
these products now is timely because we do find hotels more open to embracing and
adopting new technologies as a way of recovering coming out of the pandemic.”
Internal benefits
New digital solutions not only have the potential to add
efficiency for suppliers, but also for their distribution partners.
Hotelbeds reduced its headcount by about 30% across all
departments due to the pandemic, and digital commercialization director Paul
Anthony says that as the company prepares for travel to resume it has identified ways
to add automation to “make sure the efficiency gains that we have been able to see
are possible are maintained as we go back into growth mode.”
As part of that, Hotelbeds has updated its extranet to make
it easier for hotels to enroll without the need for human support. The company
has also created new tools for channel managers to onboard hotels using an API
that imports all of the necessary information.
Along with spurring technological innovation, Anthony says
the COVID crisis has caused Hotelbeds to adjust its approach to hotel
acquisition.
We do find hotels more open to embracing and adopting new technologies as a way of recovering coming out of the pandemic.
Sankar Narayan - SiteMinder
“We want to make sure that we are focusing on the ones that
we are able to gain what we believe to be the right margin. A new hotel requires
an introduction to our customer base. They need to do work to be able to bring
that to the fore as well. The entire chain takes time for that to happen. So
we’ll be focusing on those hotels that are willing to pay the distribution cost
of what we do,” he says.
“So yes, we are open for business. At any cost? No.”
What that means for new properties looking to join Hotelbeds
is an end to what Anthony says used to be the “honeymoon period” that existed
pre-pandemic and enabled hotels to join the system at a lower initial cost.
“I think maybe at the point of entry it probably looks
higher, but I don’t think that means that the reality of that cost of
distribution is now higher. It’s just that we won’t be as permissive to say, ‘Come
on at whatever cost of distribution you feel comfortable to pay and then after
that we’ll talk about showing you the value of our distribution and seeing how you
can then pay us for that.’”
“Now it’s, ‘This is what Hotelbeds can offer you, this is
the cost of distribution that we will need to be able to offer that to you. We’re
here for you, and please advise if you would like to start working with us.’”
Along with upfront pricing – which Anthony says is between
18 and 20% - the pandemic has also led Hotelbeds to insist on having
specific rate types, including nonrefundable and package options.
Catalyst for collaboration
Similar to Hotelbeds, WebBeds has also been updating its onboarding
systems in the past year to make them more efficient for suppliers.
Mark Desborough, WebBeds chief operating officer for Northern Europe and the
Americas, says because the company has grown through acquisition
in the past few years – including acquiring JacTravel
in 2017 and Destinations
of the World in 2018 – it was operating multiple platforms, which meant
inefficiencies for its partners. The slowdown of the past year, Desborough
says, gave the company an opportunity to finish building a single platform for
onboarding new supply.
Yes, we are open for business. At any cost? No.
Paul Anthony - Hotelbeds
The pandemic has also spurred the company to seek collaborative
solutions with its technology partners.
“For example - SiteMinder - we have done a joint promotion
with them to be able to go out to the hotels that are connected with them to encourage
more of them to connect to our channel. Or with a PMS, for example, in the past
maybe we would have needed to go to each individual hotel to get a contract,
now we are working with the PMS providers to say, 'With these criteria you can
sign up and start working with us,'” Desborough says.
“This has been accelerated by the pandemic. Because we
haven’t necessarily been bogged down with the day-to-day, we’ve been able to
push forward with ideas we previously had.”
To the question of whether WebBeds has paused supply acquisition,
Desborough says, to the contrary, the company has been looking to expand its portfolio.
“The difficulty of not continuing [to add supply] is, when is
there enough demand to be able to come back?” he says.
“If you are honest with people – I don’t think anybody is under
any illusion that there’s not less business around than there would normally. So
I’m not promising you that we’re going to fill your hotel, but I can promise
you we will put you out to our client base and so when things do start to pick up
and we are in a position to be able to provide more business to everybody, you
will be included in that. And obviously then we’re going from a running start rather
than having to sort of start from scratch.
“Our view has been to be prepared for when we get back to
some normality, because it will happen.”