SEATTLE – Yapta announced the full release of its automated hotel rebooking solution, bringing to market the corporate travel industry’s first truly touchless hotel rebooking technology committed to zero traveler impact. Yapta’s automated technology is capable of immediately rebooking “savings eligible” hotel reservations directly within the Sabre GDS, without the need for an agent to assist, and without disrupting a traveler’s itinerary.
By utilizing Yapta’s automated hotel rebooking service, customers have seen savings opportunities converted at a significantly higher rate, resulting in greater savings levels and decreased travel agency costs.
On average, Yapta clients see a 30 percent increase in savings achieved using automated technology and see a decrease of 35 percent in agent costs. Yapta has saved customers $75 million in actual bottom line savings using RoomIQ. Automation represents the potential for an additional $22 million in savings to Yapta’s customers, without any additional agent costs or traveler impact.
“Yapta’s automated solution is simple to implement, significantly increases savings, and reduces operational costs, all while maintaining a positive traveler experience,” said Valerie Layman, Yapta’a Chief Product and Services Officer. “When travel managers are already seeing up to four percent savings on their hotel spend, why wouldn’t they want automation? And because we tie automation to a company’s BestMatch settings, there is no downside for a travel manager.”
Utilizing Yapta’s innovative Best Match functionality, corporate travel managers can simply “green-light” specific hotel reservations for automated rebooking. As part of the configuration of Best Match settings, travel managers can select from a set of key hotel criteria to determine the Best Match for their company – including properties with the exact same rate code, same bed type, same room type (i.e. view, superior, suite), same or better cancelation policy, and same or better amenities. Travel managers can also target properties with negotiated rates only, and with commissionable rates. The functionality helps ensure zero traveler impact and higher rates of travel policy compliance.
“There’s been great demand from our customers for automated hotel rebooking functionality,” Layman said. “They’ve already seen how well our automated airfare rebooking functionality performs, so this was the logical next step. However, as always, preserving the traveler’s itinerary was a top priority.”
Yapta serves more than 8,300 customers in 46 countries and has delivered more than $250 million in total trip savings. On average, Yapta clients save $260 per airline ticket and $109 per hotel stay.
“Airfare and hotel price tracking are now table stakes for corporate travel programs and procurement departments around the world,” said James Filsinger, President and CEO of Yapta. “Automating the rebooking process when savings are available is a huge leap forward for our customers and it raises the technology bar for the corporate travel industry.”
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