BCD Travel extends price assurance to all clients as standard offering

BCD Travel extends Hotel Price Assurance as standard offering — giving travelers and clients confidence that they’re getting the lowest hotel rates

UTRECHT, The Netherlands, Aug. 8, 2018 – Global travel management company BCD Travel is extending their best-in-class Hotel Price Assurance offering as a standard feature to all clients — giving travelers and clients confidence that they’re getting the lowest available rates when booking hotel rooms. The new offering is available as part of BCD’s TripSource Hotels offering at no cost.

BCD’s proprietary hotel platform integrates with TRIPBAM’s market-leading hotel price monitoring technology, which automatically rebooks rooms if rates drop between the time a room is booked and the cancellation period. The most sophisticated price monitoring tool in the industry, Hotel Price Assurance on average finds lower rates up to 8% of the time with average saving of $50 per booking.

A hotelier’s primary tool for controlling supply is price, and hotel inventory is perishable (if a room isn’t booked, it goes empty). For these reasons, room rates fluctuate drastically—sometimes daily—right up until the day of check-in. Hotel Price Assurance, the most sophisticated price monitoring tool in the industry, takes advantage of the fluctuations and rebooks when prices fall.

“Dynamic hotel pricing provides great savings opportunities for corporate travel buyers who have tools in place to take advantage of rate fluctuations,” said Yannis Karmis, BCD Travel Senior Vice President, Product Planning & Development. “Our decision to roll out a standard price assurance offering lets BCD clients begin saving immediately without waiting for the next budget cycle or having to first prove its value to their stakeholders.”

Another advantage of the standard offering: Hotel Price Assurance is ready to use “out of the box.” The standard product requires no complex settings or hidden configurations. Room-comparison rules used to monitor rates are clearly defined and based on client feedback and best practices. The service applies regardless of how the booking is made — whether using BCD’s TripSource traveler experience platform, a preferred online booking tool or through a BCD agent. Even incremental hotel savings, when multiplied across an entire program, can significantly accumulate over time.

For example, Abercrombie & Fitch has seen an average $60 per night reduction on hotel room rates when Hotel Price Assurance rebooks original reservations. The American Cancer Society has seen average nightly savings triple over the course of four months.

“Hotel Price Assurance, powered by TRIPBAM, provides corporate travel buyers the most powerful solution available today for capturing, measuring and managing hotel spend,” said Steve Reynolds, Founder and CEO of TRIPBAM. “This first-of-its-kind solution pairs fully automated hotel rate assurance with a fully automated rebooking service for a truly unique offering that is free to BCD clients.”

BCD Travel’s new standard Hotel Price Assurance offering will initially launch in North America before rolling out to other regions—monitoring hotel rates and rebooking like rooms based on a core set of savings principles. A Premium version, including advanced methods of shopping for lower rates, also powered by TRIPBAM, is already available in the U.S., Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, Ireland and Germany, and will soon be available in Switzerland.