Swissôtel Adds Direct Connections To Corp. Options

<B>Swiss&ocirc;tel Adds Direct Connections To Corp. Options</B>

By Bruce Serlen

Swiss&ocirc;tel Hotels & Resorts this month announced it is providing corporate clients with direct connections through its Web site, allowing travelers to make reservations for any of its 23 hotels worldwide at the negotiated rate. By entering an access code and ID, travelers can transact directly with the chain's live inventory and receive current availability at the negotiated rate.

Travel managers have been interested in this capability for a number of years. "The ease of use should make for greater compliance with the hotel program, which is the travel buyer's main objective," said Chris Riga, senior vice president for sales and marketing.

For Swiss&ocirc;tel, the key advantage is that direct bookings cut down on distribution costs. The initiative accomplishes this by bypassing the GDS, going directly from the Internet to the customer central reservation system, which has a direct interface with each property's PMS.

"Once in the booking system, it's possible for the traveler to book at the negotiated allocations and room rates," said Michelle Woodley, vice president for distribution.

Traditionally, these clients worked through the GDS. One potential downside for travel managers is that they no longer will have access to GDS data. "The GDS would have provided data on all the chains' preferred hotels in a destination," she said. In this case, data is available now at the end of the transaction. "Travel buyers should find this beneficial because of what the data indicate about actual total spend and travel patterns," she said. "We can capture more information about the booking entity, specifically who's making the booking. Travel buyers want to know this, but have difficulty tracking it themselves."

For Swiss&ocirc;tel, the availability of direct booking is intended as an option, rather than a mandate. "It may not be right for every client, whether the corporate account, who books properties across the chain, or the smaller account who may only deal with one property," Woodley said. Clients still are welcome to book through other channels.

As communications technology has become less expensive, Swiss&ocirc;tel's modest size enabled it to develop direct bookings without a large financial commitment. "The number of properties involved made development more manageable than it would have been for larger companies that have broader portfolios," Riga said.



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looking around the bend</B>

The initiative opens the door for Swiss&ocirc;tel to upgrade its guest history program and eventually to provide full folio data. "Like other upscale hotel companies, we stress personalized service. Being able to access information on frequent travelers' tastes and preferences across all our hotels is crucial to providing this kind of service," Riga said.

Swiss&ocirc;tel isn't promising, but eventually there should be cost savings for the client. "Down the road, it should be possible to return some of these savings to the travel manager in terms of lower rates," he said.

Timing played a part in the decision to launch the system in July. "The hotel RFP process is about to get underway for the 2001 negotiations," he said. "Many of the RFPs we've already received this year have asked about the possibility of booking at the negotiated rate on the Web. So we expect this will be of interest to travel managers as they put together their hotel programs."

Separately, Swiss&ocirc;tel started beta testing a related program last year where it makes direct booking available at the negotiated rate to the property's PMS through a client's intranet. The client was chosen because of the large volume it generates for one property in the chain. The experiment has been successful and continues, but there are no plans to extend it to other clients at this time.