HOT on the heels of its signing three hotel groups to its Tripadvisor Plus subscription programme, Tripadvisor, now calling itself “the world’s largest travel guidance platform”, announced four new connectivity partnerships that it says will enable thousands of hotels to participate for the first time.
The partnerships with SiteMinder, Roiback, Derbysoft and WebHotelier follow on the heels of its signing Barceló Hotel Group (BHG), Millennium Hotels and Resorts (MHR) and Pestana Hotel Group to directly connect to Tripadvisor Plus at the corporate group level.
This means the three hotel groups’ accommodation – close to 500 properties in total – will be automatically enrolled into the programme, offering special rates and perks to Tripadvisor Plus members.
Tripadvisor Plus is the company’s new annual subscription that offers members travel savings, perks and VIP services. Participating hotels pay zero commission and the company argues that “participating hotels are able to reinvest this third party cost saving into an enhanced guest experience via members-only room rates and exclusive guest perks, attracting a highly valuable customer segment of ready-to-book Tripadvisor Plus members”.
Kanika Soni, chief commercial officer, Tripadvisor, said that with travel rebounding in the US, the news “shows the momentum we are building with the programme”.
The partnerships with the four connectivity partners meanwhile will open up scope to bring more hotels into the fold. Previously, individual hotels were only able to connect to Tripadvisor Plus via select global distribution system (GDS) providers.
Now, hotels using technology provided by SiteMinder, Roiback, WebHotelier and DerbySoft are able to participate in Tripadvisor Plus as well. Additional connectivity partnerships are expected later in the year.
“Since we launched Tripadvisor Plus earlier this year, we’ve heard from hoteliers who were very eager to join the programme but weren’t able to do so easily based on the connectivity solutions we had in place while the programme was in beta. Working directly with some of the biggest connectivity partners in the world will fix that for thousands of hotels,” said Daniel Mitchell, vice president, Tripadvisor Plus supply.
“We have been able to solve for this so quickly by using a lot of the existing technology infrastructure we already had in place, including the technology used to power Instant Booking. And we’re not stopping there. We expect more connectivity partners to come on board soon as we continue to grow both Tripadvisor Plus membership and supply.”
