BARCELONA - baVel, the leading e-settlement platform for the tourism industry has held a conference, for the fourth consecutive year, bringing more than 50 global leading tourism companies together. The main technological innovations in forms of payment were announced at the event. The aim of the summit was to encourage networking between MDs, finance directors and IT directors. Some of the largest Tour Operators took part, such as Thomas Cook, Hotelbeds, Amadeus, Odigeo (eDreams) and Logitravel; as well as key hotel chains such as Hilton, Accor and Melia; and car hire companies such as Hertz and Avis, among others.
This year's sessions focused on strategic issues for tourism companies, as well as new B2B payment solutions, optimising currency exchange transactions, claiming back international VAT for corporate travellers, virtual credit cards and new technologies for managing B2B customer-supplier relationships, such as the PRM (Partner Relationship Management) tool. Additionally, there were two sections dealing with specific solutions for tour operators and travel agents, as well as tourism service providers, hotel chains and car hire companies.
At the baVel Summit 2016, corporate payment industry experts such as Wex, Global Reach Partners and Taxecure offered technological solutions to problems that companies in the industry face. Thanks to these innovations in forms of payment, tourism companies can eliminate the risk of fluctuations and reduce currency exchange commission, claim back the VAT on corporate expenses, and increase efficiency by automatically linking virtual payment cards to electronic invoices issued by service providers.
Sebastian Ross, the founder of the Spanish chapter of Conscious Capitalism offered a different kind of vision. In his talk, which was part of the inspirational section, he spoke of the importance of companies fighting to focus their business on a human purpose rather than having profit as their sole objective.
The informative and innovative nature of the baVel Summit has achieved its objective of offering tourism industry experts a new way of networking.
baVel, which belongs to the Voxel Group, is the world's leading eSettlement platform for the hotel and travel industries. The solutions developed by baVel facilitate the electronic exchange of transactional information (orders, invoices, virtual payments, etc.) between customers and suppliers.
It provides services to more than 40,000 companies in 100 different countries and handles more than 60 million invoices each year. In Spain in particular, more than 90% of the main hotel chains, 90% of the main restaurant groups and practically all tour operators and travel agencies operate via baVel.
