BCD Travel is extending its Hotel Price Assurance offering as a standard feature to all clients— giving travelers and clients confidence that they’re getting the lowest available rates when booking hotel rooms. BCD announced that the new offering will be available at no cost as part of its proprietary hotel platform, TripSource Hotels.
BCD’s hotel platform integrates with TRIPBAM’s price-monitoring technology, which automatically rebooks hotel rooms if rates drop between the time a room is booked and the cancellation period. On average, Hotel Price Assurance finds lower rates up to 8% of the time and saves US$50 per booking.
The offering enables corporate travel buyers to seize opportunities in today’s dynamic hotel market. Here’s how: A hotelier’s primary tool for controlling supply is price, and hotel inventory is perishable (if a room isn’t booked, it goes empty). So, room rates fluctuate drastically—sometimes daily—right up until the day of check-in. Hotel Price Assurance takes advantage of the fluctuations and rebooks when prices fall.
“Dynamic hotel pricing provides great savings opportunities for corporate travel buyers who have tools in place to take advantage of rate fluctuations,” said Yannis Karmis, BCD Travel senior vice president of Product Planning & Development. “Our decision to roll out a standard price assurance offering lets BCD clients begin saving immediately without waiting for the next budget cycle or having to first prove its value to their stakeholders.”
Another advantage: Hotel Price Assurance is out-of-the-box ready. The standard offering requires no complex settings or configurations. Room-comparison rules used to monitor rates are clearly defined and based on client feedback and best practices. The service applies regardless of whether travelers book hotels via BCD’s TripSource platform, the company’s online booking tool or a BCD agent.
Even incremental hotel savings, when multiplied across an entire program, can be significant. For example, Abercrombie & Fitch benefits from an average US$60 per night reduction on hotel room rates when Hotel Price Assurance rebooks original reservations. The American Cancer Society saw average nightly savings triple in just four months on bookings where Hotel Price Assurance found a lower rate.
“Hotel Price Assurance, powered by TRIPBAM, provides corporate travel buyers the most powerful solution available today for capturing, measuring and managing hotel spend,” said Steve Reynolds, Founder and CEO of TRIPBAM. “This first-of-its-kind solution pairs fully automated hotel rate assurance with a fully automated rebooking service for a truly unique offering that is free to BCD clients.”
BCD Travel’s new standard Hotel Price Assurance offering will initially launch in North America before rolling out to other regions—monitoring hotel rates and rebooking like rooms based on a core set of savings principles. A premium version with advanced methods of shopping for lower rates is already available in the U.S., Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Germany and will soon be available in Switzerland.
Learn more about how BCD Travel is innovating for clients and their travelers, including by rolling out air bookings and Alexa-enabled voice activation on its popular TripSource platform.
