REBEL Travel Corporation Solves Hotel Industry Challenges Through A Collaborative Approach With Its REBEL Alliance

Around the virtual water cooler, our solutions partners that make up what I like to call the REBEL Alliance, discuss a number of topics related to the travel and hospitality industry. One of the recurring themes of discussions is that while technology innovation is important, what the hoteliers really need right now are more innovative services. The recent resource constraints exacerbated by the pandemic have created challenges in areas the hospitality industry has largely been able to take for granted during the boom years. We've all heard the stories of hoteliers wearing multiple hats to keep operations running. Cutbacks in housekeeping, sales, catering, and more have strained current operations while also hampering the ability to strategically source future business.

It's a great opportunity for partners to step up and provide more services so that hoteliers can focus on what they do best. We are all listening and responding to what hotels really need right now… and taking a proactive approach while leveraging strategic partnerships for collaboration on solutions that address hotelier needs today AND into the future. In fact, we have already added services as part of our offerings to address some of these concerns.

Software-With-A-Service

As an example, at HotelPORT?, we've launched PropertyVIEW? F&B ESSENTIALS for Restaurants, which provide food and beverage teams an invaluable resource to proactively audit and facilitate updates of their restaurant information and menus across top third party channels. Partnerships with TripAdvisor's SinglePlatform and Yelp provide a single-source marketing and distribution solution for which F&B managers have been wanting for years.

This was born from the vision behind our industry-leading Software-With-A-Service, PropertyVIEW?, which was developed and continues to evolve in partnership with leading travel software development powerhouse, GP Solutions. Hoteliers and Restaurants around the world use PropertyVIEW? to ensure that their information is accurate on third-party channels and in many cases, their own brand websites.

Software Development

Additionally, HotelPORT is supporting hotel technology efforts as hoteliers take a fresh look at their technology stack.? One of the first areas that hotels explore when evaluating their needs for technology and software is an assessment of the current state of their systems. Unfortunately, many hotels have been saddled with outdated legacy technology solutions which may not be capable of keeping pace with changing consumer habits or needs. In partnership with GP Solutions, the team at HotelPORT recently expanded its service offering to provide greater technology support capabilities for hotels including business analysis/requirements definition services, systems integration development, custom application development, and dedicated development teams. With these comprehensive services, whether integrating new payment gateways for a leading PMS, building a unified API to better manage third-party image distribution, or building the next great booking and dynamic packaging engine from scratch, HotelPORT is democratizing access to technology for hoteliers.

Meetings & Events Support

At e-DestinACCESS we recently launched Destin Managed Services, which provides consulting and support for meetings and event services-related tasks such as sales outreach, eProposal preparation, meeting planner follow up, and ancillary revenue-generating destination services for small and boutique hotels with temporarily reduced or eliminated sales teams and for big box hotels needing extra support to handle SMERF and large meeting requests. We're helping hotels to stay competitive in the rapidly recovering meetings and events segment while also adding revenue to the bottom line. Hotel owners in particular love this service as it is a revenue driver in addition to being a time-saver and reducer of costs.

Comp Set Analysis Thought Differently

It's time to think differently about hotel competitive set analysis. We are often asked by hoteliers to do what we do with content on the rates and availability side of the fence. Rather than recreate the wheel, we partnered with hotel data provider Hotel Compete to arm hotels with a current assessment of their property versus the competition. We are laser-focused on helping hotels understand which competitors are likely to attract attention from their property from the perspective of their most important constituency; those making the decisions about whether or not to book the hotel. In addition, we can also run the analysis from the perspective of the competitors so that hotels can see where they rank for their likely bookers.

Our innovative Comp Set Analyzer report is designed to determine which other hotels are being considered when a booking is being made. Unlike most industry comp sets, we do not have arbitrary limitations. If you are part of a brand and all of your competitors are in your brand family, then that will be your comp set. Since we have no requirements for hotels to provide us data, there are no participation constraints and we can proactively recommend or identify potential competitors based on a number of metrics that are relevant at the time of booking.

Innovation? Check. Services? You betcha!

In fact, the timing of this whole ‘services’ discussion couldn't be better. This month, many hotels have started their budgeting process for 2022. While many are forecasting growth and a return to something resembling normalcy, many are well aware that the future is more unknowable than past years and are trying to conservatively hope for the best but plan for worst-case scenarios.

We are all listening and responding to what our customers really need right now… and taking a proactive approach so that our customers can focus on what they do best while leveraging the REBEL Alliance for strategic collaboration on solutions that address their needs today AND into the future. Our goal is to assist hoteliers through this transitional period and beyond.

Here's to a bigger and brighter travel future.?