New phase of hotel ‘pioneering system’

Expedia and Hotels.com launched the next phase of implementation for the direct connect technology they claim saves more than 1,000 hotel properties both time and money.

The reason: the “pioneering” system enables the automatic delivery of bookings made on the two travel sites, according to Expedia.

The second phase will enable hoteliers to manage the room inventory offered on Expedia.com directly from the hotel’s central reservation systems (CRS), eliminating the need to manually update the Expedia extranet.

This phase, the companies contend, demonstrates Expedia’s momentum in developing proprietary technology, which will provide hotels with a streamlined system for managing rates and inventory.

Expedia says the technology was designed from the ground up to serve the unique needs of the hotel industry.

Earlier this year Expedia and Hotels.com began the first phase of deploying direct connect with participating hotels, which automated the delivery of bookings, thereby reducing labor costs.

Hyatt Hotels will be the first partner to have completed the two-way direct connectivity.

The technology is being rolled out systematically across the Hyatt network and will be completed this month, according to Hyatt.

Report by David Wilkening