Sabre swoops on gift card leader
Sabre Hospitality has moved closer to its long-term strategy to be the leading global hotel commerce and distribution platform by acquiring UK-based hospitality e-commerce provider Techsembly.
Techsembly provides an automated e-commerce solution enabling hotels to manage multiple online property stores, products, and logistics on one centralised platform.
Techsembly is also a leader in the gift card business for hoteliers, offering advanced and configurable capabilities in terms of selling and fulfillment of gift cards.
Scott Wilson, president of Sabre Hospitality said the acquisition would “accelerate our product roadmap via Techsembly’s marketplace and gift card capabilities”, and offer “the most robust and effective suite of integrated retailing solutions designed to meet the retailing needs of today’s modern hoteliers”.
Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Tencent drives Allo Bank’s ‘explosive’ growth.
Allo Bank has become the most downloaded digital banking application in Indonesia following its adoption of Tencent Cloud’s technology.
Allo Bank said the TenCent tie-up contributed significantly to the bank’s “explosive business growth and acquisition of six million users since its launch” and helped the bank’s mission to serve the underbanked population in Indonesia, “including tech-savvy young adults”.
Since 2021, Tencent Cloud has deployed two Internet Data Centres (IDC) in Indonesia.
Booking.com’s new Trip Planner has all the answers.
Booking.com has taken the wraps off its new AI Trip Planner, launched in beta to US travellers in the company’s app.
The AI Trip Planner blends Booking.com’s own artificial intelligence with large language model (LLM) technology from OpenAI’s ChatGPT API to create a new conversational experience for people to start their trip planning process.
Travellers can ask the AI Trip Planner general travel-related questions, as well as more specific queries to support any stage of their trip planning process, including scoping out potential destinations and accommodation options, providing travel inspiration based on the individual traveller’s needs and requirements, as well as creating itineraries for a particular city, country or region.
The AI Trip Planner provides travellers with a visual list of destinations and properties, including Booking.com’s pricing information, with deep links to view more details.
With a tap on accommodation choices, they can complete the reservation, as the AI Trip Planner is directly integrated into the accommodation booking experience in the Booking.com app.
Rhinos get help from AI.
Thanda Safari, a Big Five game reserve in South Africa’s KwaZulu Natal province, has started using AI-driven technology to track and monitor its rhino populations.
Previously, Thanda Safari used various methods including foot collars and horn pods to monitor their black and white rhino populations. However, there were important limitations with these approaches. For example, the use of telemetry units requires line-of-sight, with no direct data recording capabilities or GPS functionality.
Newly developed AI-enabled foot collars can detect abnormal activity, including a potential poaching attempt.
The newly developed AI-enabled collars continuously observe, analyse and learn to identify behaviour patterns specific to each rhino. When registering abnormal activity related to a possible poaching attempt, fighting, mating, giving birth or illness, the collar triggers an instant alert on rangers’ phones, pinpointing the incident’s precise location via GPS. This facilitates rapid response and investigation.
This is particularly important as South Africa faces a pressing issue with rhino poaching, with statistics highlighting the urgency of conservation efforts. In 2022 alone South Africa lost 448 rhinos to poaching.
Source: Dorine Reinstein/Travel Weekly USA
German Rail slowed by red signal
German Rail (DB) plans to launch an appeal against a ruling by the German Federal Cartel Office (BKartA) that is intended to open the online ticket retailing market to competition.
An investigation was launched following complaints by independent providers including Trainline and Omio that they were being prevented from accessing real-time data and were insufficiently reimbursed for selling DB tickets.
European Union (EU) regulations on rail passenger rights that came into force on 7 June require such data to be shared by law.
The OTAs also claimed they were being prohibited from offering discounts and restricted in other ways by stringent contractual terms imposed by DB.
The ruling will oblige DB to remunerate independent mobility platforms for their services.
