Technology: Recommending the right property

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21 May, 2012

Technology: Recommending the right property

By admin

A customer walks into your agency and asks about four-star hotels located in a major Asian city. You make your recommendations and they subsequently book a stay at one of the properties. When you find out from your client how their trip went, their feedback is less than glowing.

Booking hotel accommodation for clients is part of a travel agent's daily ritual, but there's always the risk that their experience might fall short of what's promised – whether it's poor service, faulty technology or overpriced dining. As a consultant, how can you keep the odds in your favour?

For a start, you can develop a more balanced view of properties you haven't seen first-hand by reading user-generated reviews on websites like TripAdvisor. While such sites are generally perceived as being for consumers, as a consultant you should see them as a valuable resource.

"There are more than 1.5 million businesses listed on TripAdvisor, of which more than 555,000 are hotels," said Brian Payea, head of industry relations at TripAdvisor. "This makes the site a great place for travellers and travel agents alike to find destination information and read visitor reviews and opinions on hotels."

Hotels.com is another useful site to check out, as it contains millions of reviews from hotel guests. And there are scores of others too. At sites like Room 77 you can run your eye over the hotel floor plan, room images and virtual views from that room, while you can take virtual tours on sites like hotelvideoreviews.com, where travellers upload their own videos.

However, the fact that reviews are consumer-generated means that they're highly subjective. Even a small amount of trawling through them will reveal an extremely varied collection of opinions. Travel review websites aren't the last word on a property by any means but they'll give you a more balanced view of each one, as they don't simply contain the verbal sheen that's naturally found on hotel websites.

And, to quote Australian Federation of Travel Agents (AFTA) chief executive Jayson Westbury, "travel agents are expected to know everything about everything.

"If you don't absolutely know for sure what you are recommending, then make sure the client knows this. Tell them that you would appreciate their feedback on the hotel, as you have it on good authority that it is a decent hotel and is the latest thing going around, but welcome their feedback," he said. "If you don't know first-hand, or have a reliable source giving you feedback, then don't oversell."

Jo O'Brien, chief executive of front and mid office system Tramada, said a consultant should make sure they don't end up steering clients to book direct or on websites. "Booking accommodation can provide a very good margin and can lift the overall profitability of an agency," she said. "For that to happen, agents need to ensure that they collect their commissions from hotels post the client's departure or even in the situation where agents have to pay a gross amount in advance. Agents shouldn't lose sight of this as many of them have thousands of dollars in outstanding hotel commissions that they never chase." In the Tramada system there are reports that track these commissions and streamlined processes to collect them.

And technology providers continue to add to their range of hotel solutions in the global distribution system (GDS), meaning greater efficiencies and opportunities for consultants. Amadeus, for example, launched the Amadeus Hotel Optimisation package in January, with key features including the integration of hotel aggregator content and also a customised, fast-track service called Amadeus LinkHotel which enables quick integration of specific requested hotels that are currently not bookable in the GDS. It has also announced a strategic alliance with HRS, a worldwide hotel portal for corporate customers, with Amadeus subscribers to benefit from the addition of HRS's 250,000 hotel properties.

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