News Roundup: Plaza Premium Group adding new lounges and in-terminal hotels in more international airports, FCM Travel’s ‘minority’ investment in Shep, a US patent for Sydney-based Troovo Technologies
Hospitality: Plaza Premium Group commits $55m to expand footprint globally
Plaza Premium Group, a leading provider of airport hospitality services, is investing US$55 million for expansion worldwide with the opening of new in-terminal hotels and lounges, as well as enhancing products across 11 international airports.
“Year 2019 and 2020 mark a big leap forward for Plaza Premium Group and we are committed to serve over 16 million travellers by the end of 2020, a 10% increase compared to where we are now,” said Song Hoi-see, founder and CEO of Plaza Premium Group
He added that in addition to the expansion in Indonesia, China and the US the group would continue to create “a holistic departure, transit and arrival experience” for travellers.
Expansion of Plaza Premium Lounge
- Opening of the 1,260sqm Plaza Premium Lounge, the group’s leading brand, at Dubai International in December 2019, said to be the largest independent pay-per-use lounge at the airport’s Terminal 3.
- A 3,000sqm lounge space combining Plaza Premium First, Plaza Premium Lounge and Allways (airport meet and greet service) to fully open in Jakarta Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in the first half of this year.
- A mega lounge scheduled to fully operate in Toronto Pearson International Airport departures hall by Q2 2020; touted to be “the largest independent pay-per-use lounge in Canada” occupying nearly 1,200sqm.
- Two new locations offering express services under one roof in the group’s hometown Hong Kong
- New Plaza Premium Lounge in Sydney Airport Terminal 1 to launch Q1 2020.
- Debut of the brand in US later this year with domestic and international lounges at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport and international lounge at Denver International Airport.
Development of Aerotel, the “one-of-a-kind-in-terminal airport hotel concept
- Opening of Aerotel at Beijing Daxing International Airport, the group’s largest property among its portfolio and the largest in-terminal airport hotel in China
- New Aerotel London Heathrow at Terminal 3 arrivals, complementing Plaza Premium lounges in Terminal 2, 3, 4 and 5 to serve departure, transit and arrival passengers.
- An Aerotel in Sydney Airport opening in Q3 2020, described as the “only in-terminal airport hotel in Australia”.
- Renovation of the outdoor swimming pool at Aerotel Singapore, the brand’s inaugural location; touted as the “world’s first outdoor pool at the airport” slated to reopen Q2 2020.
- Upgrading of Aerotel Kuala Lumpur with select service extension and shared shower facilities.
In addition, the group is planning to introduce Allways at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, joining existing service points in Toronto, New Delhi, Macau, and porterage service in New York.
Launched in 1998 and headquartered in Hong Kong, Plaza Premium Group comprises business segments that include airport lounges (Plaza Premium First and Plaza Premium Lounge), airport hotel and leisure service (Aerotel and Refreshhh by Aerotel), airport meet & greet service (Allways), and a range of airport dining concepts. It operates in over 160 locations across 44 international airports.
FCM Travel Solutions invests in travel startup Shep
Travel management company and the global business travel division of Flight Centre Travel Group, FCM Travel Solutions, has made “a minority investment” in business travel technology startup Shep.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Founded in late 2016 in Austin, Texas, Shep’s browser extension-based tool assists companies with better management of travel purchased outside of their corporate travel policies. By monitoring activity on over 70 consumer travel sites it helps companies improve travel programme savings, compliance and safety.
In addition to tracking, Shep’s technology can also enforce policy at the point of sale, provides travel programmes with an easy way to capture employee bookings made on consumer travel sites, messaging employees about the travel policy while capturing those off-channel bookings for the travel team.
“We’ve had a long relationship with the Shep team and have enjoyed following their success.“ said John Morhous, chief experience officer at FCM.
“We’re excited to leverage some of this technology into our platforms, as we feel the browser extension is a simple and elegant solution to a problem many of our customers face, which is gaining visibility over spend on travel that happens outside of the managed programmes they provide.”
Daniel Senyard, CEO and co-founder of Shep, added that the team was also “very excited” to partner FCM to “support and create more sophisticated, empowered, and educated business traveller programmes.”
Shep joins FCM’s other investments and acquisitions that include Sam :] (mobile personal travel assistant) and 30SecondsToFly with its AI-powered chat booking platform.
Investors in Shep include Capital Factory, Moonshots Capital, Plug and Play, former president at Travelocity Business Ellen Keszle, former CEO of Sabre Travel Network Kathy Misunas, and former CEO of Abacus GDS Don Birch.
Payments: Troovo awarded US patent for system in facilitating travel payments
Troovo Technologies, the Sydney-based digital B2B payments processing company for the travel industry, is starting the new decade with good news – it has been granted a US patent (number 10,528,895) for “its revolutionary technology for virtual payments in travel”.
Troovo’s patent covers the ability to utilise robotic process automation (RPA) technology rather than a person to analyse a travel booking and generate a virtual credit card based on the data in the booking.
The company explained that in simple terms it does the work that people currently need to do when it comes to payments: using information contained in the booking to subsequently generate a virtual credit card and update the booking with those card details – all with absolutely no human intervention.
In announcing the award in a statement, Troovo CEO Kurt Knackstedt said: “The ability to use RPA for virtual card generation has always set Troovo apart from the rest of the industry. All other virtual payment generation products require some form of manual intervention, validation or user interface in order to facilitate the creation of the card as well as updating the booking record with card details.
“This has always been a significant impediment to the adoption of virtual cards at scale given the immense cost (in both operational and per-card terms) of other solutions. Troovo has removed the cost and quality issues that come with manual card generation and is the only solution available in the market that truly enables 100% virtual card generation 100% virtually.”
According to Troovo, it developed this capability having recognised that the payment industry lacked a truly touchless, completely virtual and easily integrated capability for driving virtual card adoption. This patent validates the intelligent manner in which it leverages RPA to solve difficult transactional processing challenges.
Troovo was the winner of the WIT 2017 Start-up Pitch held in conjunction with the annual WiT Singapore conference.
• Featured image credit (Plaza Premium Lounge in Dubai): Plaza Premium Group
