Optimising Compliance

Global companies of all statures suffer from varying levels of compliance to preferred agency channels globally. There are many causes of compliance shortfalls, but common causes tend to have strong geographical themes.

In the USA compliance is challenged, by the recent blurring of market segments. Hotels rushed to dump their prices through primarily leisure driven channels on the internet, such as Expedia and Hotels.com, undercutting traditional TMC’s.

In Europe and the Far East it’s a matter of choice – many of the regions hotels (circa 60%) are not visible to Travel Management Companies who tend to be reliant on the GDS- so again customer confidence is lost and direct booking leakage becomes common place. The need for multi-channel rate and availability access is therefore key to delivering a customer focused service and often non compliance is a ‘smoke’ alarm to the core issue of the suitability of booking platforms available to traveller and bookers.

Recent studies and project assignments undertaken by ICOR showed two large retail organisations (not transacting through a specialist provider) in the UK suffered non-compliance levels to appointed agency of circa 65% to 75%, putting immense pressure on rate inflation.

Running an effective global hotel program does require a constant eye to ensure that it is relevant and meets the needs of the organisation – and the business units within.

New properties, new facilities and accommodation provider refurbishments are constantly being monitored by ICOR consultants and can be entered into a central database, which can generate a product update message to Hotel Program Managers. The data can then be assessed immediately to evaluate opportunities to recommend inclusion of such properties onto a customer’s program.

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