Hotelbeds selects RateGain to lead the sector in rate integrity

Hotelbeds, one of the world's leading bedbanks, has today reported the launch of a partnership with RateGain, the market leader in hospitality and travel technology solutions.

RateGain will provide Hotelbeds with 'Parity+' - an advanced end-to-end rate integrity management solution that uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to track integrity issues in real-time - to help identify its hotel partners cases of opaque rates intended for offline channels being sold in other channels.

Hotelbeds has chosen to work with RateGain following a competitive RFP to find the world's leading third-party provider of rate integrity technology and monitoring tools.

Entering into this agreement is in line with Hotelbeds' commitment to take on responsibility for leading the fight against rate integrity abuse on behalf of the owners of the 180,000 properties that it partners with. As part of this, Hotelbeds has created a team dedicated to monitoring rates and invested in automated technology unavailable elsewhere in the market that uses Data Analytics to track travel sellers' flows.

More recently, Hotelbeds has introduced comprehensive measures and technology solutions, including a strict 'three strikes' policy for channels that violate distribution rules; tools that allow full traceability of rates; and the data-driven segmentation of customer channels to more closely align them with the distribution strategies of hotel partners.

As a direct result, Hotelbeds has blocked 800 sales channels of offending sellers and given up EUR300 million of otherwise profitable sales over the last year, resulting in a 90% reduction of reported incidences over the last six months to just 0.01% of room night production.

Carlos Munoz, Managing Director at Hotelbeds commented, "This year we have made significant progress in fighting rate integrity abuse on behalf of our hotel partners and I am pleased to confirm that incidences are now down to just 0.01%. But, we fully recognise that this is the number one priority for many hoteliers and we are determined to not only reduce incidences further but to also become the market leader of solutions that offer hotels; distribution capabilities that ensure they can sell the right rate, in the right channel, to the right guest, at the right time."

He added, "We want to provide transparency on the state of distribution with both Hotelbeds and other players to our hotel partners. Therefore, recently we put out an RFP to find the best third-party provider of rate integrity technology and monitoring solutions, and it gives me great pleasure to confirm that after carefully assessing all available providers, we'll be working with RateGain to track down rogue sellers that violate agreements by selling opaque rates originally intended for offline channels."

Apurva Chamaria, Chief Revenue Officer, RateGain Technologies said: "We feel this partnership is a watershed moment for our sector as Hotelbeds sets a fantastic example to the whole hospitality sector as to how bedbanks can confront rogue sellers violating rate integrity. Naturally, then the opportunity to work together to fight this cause was unmissable as no other bedbank takes this issue as seriously. Hotelbeds has a winning formula, not seen elsewhere in the market, that takes accurate client segmentation through its access to the largest data pool available of client data-points and behavior, and combines it with a commitment to investment into cutting-edge distribution technology and automated processes."

Highlighting about the Parity+ solution, Apurva further added, "Parity+ will provide Hotelbeds with an overall parity score, giving information on availability and rate violations by both property and meta-channels - as well as helping understand violation causes, all in an easy to navigate single view dashboard. Additionally, the 'On-Demand Data Refresh' feature will assist Hotelbeds to be on top of issues across 500+ distribution channels and the 'Test Reservation Module' called 'Closed Loop Service' will uncover the rogue operator behind the leaked rates."

Parity+ will allow Hotelbeds to configure smart rate shopping leveraging the data of DHISCO - the company acquired by RateGain - and comes with an AI 'Auto Reasoning' feature. By tackling integrity issues in real-time, and providing a robust rate integrity workflow management solution, Parity+ not only uncovers the rate integrity issues but also automates the categorisation and resolution of these issues, providing a complete solution for rate integrity management. Additionally, Parity+ provides industry best benchmark capabilities, meta-channels monitoring, multiple POS, mobile apps and member rates.

In recent years, Hotelbeds has focused hard on providing hotel partners with incremental, high-value bookings via B2B channels such as tour operators, retail travel agents, airlines, and points redemption schemes. These B2B channels provide hoteliers with guests that stay longer, book further in advance, cancel less, spend more in the destination and come back more often.

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