Hotelbeds initiated the partnership with PKFARE in 2017. This collaboration aimed to harness PKFARE's extensive global channel network and technology advantage, enabling Hotelbeds to swiftly expand its sales channels, optimize channel operations, and bolster rate integrity management. Consequently, this would elevate its overall sales volume and margin.
Since the partnership started in 2017, Hotelbeds has achieved multiple times growth in sales through PKFARE. In April 2023, bolstered by sales promotion, the collaborative sales surged to twice that of the previous month. In 2023 H1, the collaborative efforts saw a volume increase of over 70%, outpacing the average industry recovery rate.
Taking advantage of its intelligent technology and refined operations, PKFARE successfully increased Hotelbeds’ gross margin and insulated it from price wars, securing Hotelbeds' sustainable business growth.
PKFARE employs automated technology to accurately assign specific prices for various channels, effectively lowered Hotelbeds’ risk of rate violation.
One-stop channel expansion and distribution boosted Hotelbeds' efficiency & cost savings
In 2017, the hotel B2B distribution market was highly fragmented. The consolidation of leading traditional B2B distributors was still underway. Given the plethora of B2B and B2C distribution channels, considerable time and expenditure were required for Hotelbeds’ channel expansion and management.
“As a travel B2B trade marketplace, PKFARE aggregates over 2000 demand channels, encompassing leading global OTAs, TMCs and travel agencies. This not only complements Hotelbeds’ existing sales channels but also provides innovative online distribution solutions to assist Hotelbeds of the integrated management of various channels.” Chun-Yi Lai, the Regional Wholesale Manager of Hotelbeds Greater China, commented.
By integrating with PKFARE’s standard API, Hotelbeds swiftly taps into PKFARE’s demand network that spans over 100+ countries and regions, enhancing Hotelbeds' efficiency while minimizing its costs. In addition, given the intricate supply chain of the hotel industry, PKFARE’s integrated management of various sales channels has delivered great value to Hotelbeds by increasing sales, reducing rate violation and optimizing customer experience.
As PKFARE consistently expands its channels and refines channel management, it has evolved into one of Hotelbeds' most pivotal clients, playing a key role in driving Hotelbeds' sales growth.
AI technology & refined operations fully optimized Hotelbeds' booking metrics
In recent years, digital technology has emerged as a pivotal growth driver for the hotel distribution industry. As an industry front-runner, Hotelbeds is not only committed to enhancing its technological capabilities but also capitalizes on the tech strengths of its partners to fuel business expansion.
"All of Hotelbeds' orders are generated through APIs. The entire booking process involves many steps, including effectively utilizing QPS(Queries per second), reducing technical costs, improving conversions, etc. Furthermore, the speed of the API is measured in milliseconds, which places high demands on technical capabilities." Chun-Yi Lai highly appreciates the technical capability of PKFARE, stating, "PKFARE possesses advanced systems and technical expertise, which is one of their core strengths we value most."
Taking advantage of its intelligent technology and refined operations, PKFARE thoroughly optimized key metrics throughout the entire booking process, including QPS efficiency, display rate, look-to-book ratio and gross margin.
▪Accurate mapping: attaining match rates far above industry averages
Mapping is crucial for optimizing hotel distribution efficiency. Hotelbeds offers access to 300,000 global hotels and 5 million room variations, making the mapping process highly complex and time-consuming.
PKFARE boasts superior mapping technology. In early 2023, PKFARE elevated its mapping logic and algorithms, achieving a hotel match rate of 97% and improving the room type match rate from 60% to 80%—greatly surpassing industry averages.
The impressive match rate achieved by PKFARE can be attributed to its vast partner network and the resultant accumulation of extensive data. It has instituted an efficient data-cleansing process and consistently refined its matching algorithm. Furthermore, due to PKFARE's in-depth understanding of demand channels, its mapping logic emphasizes order conversion and employs more rigorous data measurement standards, ensuring even greater mapping precision.
▪AI algorithm combined with refined operations: Optimizing booking efficiency and maximizing revenue
In Hotelbeds’ entire booking process, PKFARE deploys AI algorithm combined with refined operations, to maximize the efficiency in shopping, pricing, booking and among others.
Over the course of shopping, PKFARE screens out invalid queries in advance and dynamically conducts the filtering on a regular basis, ensuring that Hotelbeds' hotel inventories are maximally displayed on the channel end.
In the pricing phase, PKFARE conducts real-time monitoring for each channel, identifying contents with a competitive advantage, and replacing those with adverse data indicators. Thanks to PKFARE's meticulous real-time monitoring, frequent adjustments, and superior automation, they've adeptly kept price changes and room unavailability rates exceptionally low, amplifying Hotelbeds' sales across diverse channels.
During booking, PKFARE takes into account factors such as exchange rate fluctuations, price changes, inaccurate room statuses, and network timeouts. They implement dynamic management to maximize the booking success rate.
Furthermore, PKFARE has also increased Hotelbeds' daily revenue per available room (RevPAR) across the distributed channels. PKFARE refines its operations through technical means and joint promotions with channels, calculating the optimal combination of gross margin and display rate to maximize daily revenue for each room."
Automated technology reduced rate violation risks
Maintaining rate integrity is vital for securing a healthy B2B hotel distribution market. Hotelbeds is committed to safeguarding rate integrity, seeking sustainable growth in the hotel distribution industry.
Since 2022, PKFARE and Hotelbeds have made major progress in rate integrity management. Together, they’ve instituted a tiered approach to managing upstream contents and pricing. They’ve also streamlined the entire process for RSP management, ensuring that prices are aligned with each channel, thus fully improving Hotelbeds' rate integrity management abilities.
Support Hotelbeds in efficiently and seamlessly bridging supply & demand with optimal product delivery
In today’s industry landscape, digital technology is set to play an increasingly crucial role in hotel distribution. Hotelbeds and PKFARE are poised to fortify their symbiotic technological relationship. Hotelbeds will provide PKFARE insights into market trends gleaned from its impressive 4 billion daily search queries. In turn, PKFARE will employ sophisticated algorithms to suggest revenue strategies, innovative promotional approaches, and relevant risk models to Hotelbeds."
"In the post-pandemic landscape, Hotelbeds is dedicated to fueling the recovery of our partners' outbound business and positioning ourselves as the market's partner of choice through superior products and services," said Chun-Yi Lai, the Regional Wholesale Manager of Hotelbeds Greater China, "With PKFARE's channel expertise and technological edge, we can more effectively execute our market strategy, ensuring a seamless alignment of supply and demand while providing the optimal product mix to the right customers when they need it most."
Hotelbeds are global leaders in the TravelTech space. Through its advanced tech platform, it distributes accommodations from 300,000 hotels to quality travel distributors across 150 markets worldwide, empowering business growth of both ends.