Yapta Announces the Commercial Release of TravelAI Hotel Analytics, Providing Unprecedented Visibility into Hotel POS Data and Contracted Rates
Yapta, the leading provider of airfare and hotel price tracking services, today announced the general availability of TravelAI hotel analytics for the optimization of corporate supplier negotiations and policy compliance. TravelAI utilizes a combination of real-time hotel availability data and machine learning to identify areas of focus where companies can create or improve opportunities to save. At a glance, the solution delivers actionable insight into supplier utilization and performance, contract rate performance, and travel policy effectiveness. The solution also aggregates anonymous hotel pricing data across the millions of travel itineraries tracked by Yapta, creating benchmarks by spend amount, geography, industry and supplier.
Most corporate travel programs suffer from a lack of booking data transparency, creating inefficiencies in the RFP process. Because the RFP process relies on vendor supplied pricing that does not report the availability of contract and ‘best rate’ options at the time of booking, most companies simply cannot identify the source of breakage that’s costing them money – either supplier or traveler compliance. TravelAI is helping bring this into clearer focus for customers, providing them with point-of-sale data from the actual booking and helping them gain visibility into rate availability and attainment.
“Travel managers are demanding insights that are prescriptive and actionable,” said Valerie Layman, Chief Product and Services Officer at Yapta. “TravelAI highlights exactly where the contract rate and policy breakage occurs and allows issues to be addressed immediately. Because the solution examines all available rates at the time of booking, it provides travel managers with clear guidance on whether a traveler made a decision to book a higher rate or premium room type when a standard contract room rate is available or if the supplier is not performing.”
Yapta customers participating in the TravelAI early adopter program have utilized the solution to measure the competitiveness of their contracted rates by comparing them to booked rates, pricing benchmarks, and the best available rates (BAR). They rely on this data to offer actionable insights throughout the year, highlighting issues with suppliers and where negotiations are not being realized. In addition, with the visibility into traveler behavior at the time of booking, Travel Managers can implement and enforce policies that encourage booking lowest standard available rates. And because the data is not filtered, TravelAI has also revealed how commissionable rates can influence vendor re-booking behavior.
“With the added visibility of all available rates and the ability to validate booked rates and lower rates that may become available against our corporate negotiated rates, we are now more confident when determining whether our suppliers are performing as contracted – and we have a better feel for how well our travelers are complying with policy,” said Jeff Daily, Director of Global Travel at Sanmina. “TravelAI is helping us easily identify which rate types and which properties best support our travel program, our strategies, and can assist in influencing traveler behavior.”
"TravelAI is quite literally transforming the way contracted travel spend gets managed and sourced,” said James Filsinger, President and CEO of Yapta. “Travel buyers can now have the confidence that they are sourcing with the right suppliers, at the right rates, in the right markets – all while having Yapta’s price assurance tools working in the background.”
In addition to being available to customers 24/7 via web portal access, TravelAI hotel analytics is also available as an app, bundled with the Tableau app currently found in The App Store. Yapta plans to roll out commercial availability of TravelAI for airfare in Q2 2019. For more information on Yapta TravelAI and how it helps corporate travel managers and procurement teams optimize supplier negotiations and policy compliance, please visit: www.yapta.com/TravelAI.
