Expedia Group’s Egencia to Optimize Booking with ML for Hotels
Egencia®, business travel management from Expedia Group™, announces savings for its customers driven by Egencia Savings Finder for Air and Egencia Smart Mix. Additionally, the company is announcing the pilot of Egencia Savings Finder for Hotel.
Savings Finder for Air aims to unlock value for corporate travel programs by applying machine learning technology to automatically track price variations and rebook tickets without any action from the business traveler or arranger. When Savings Finder identifies a lower rate within an average of the first seven days of booking1, it automatically rebooks the reservation with the same amenities and ticket class. Since launching Savings Finder for Air earlier this year, customers have saved millions of dollars. Based on these results, estimates indicate total savings could double by the end of 2020.
Following the success of Savings Finder for Air, Savings Finder for Hotel will be available in pilot to a limited number of customers in Q4 2019 with a target of Q1 2020 for general release. The new capability leverages a similar approach as Savings Finder for Air, including automatic re-shopping and rebooking of a reserved hotel room with the same amenities if a price drop is discovered.
Growing the portfolio of machine-learning based features benefiting customers globally, Smart Mix uses algorithms and machine learning to provide business travelers a quick, intuitive shopping and booking experience. The feature analyzes data from simple to complex scenarios and may factor in the personal preferences of each traveler, along with the company’s travel policy, to deliver smarter search results.
Travel managers can see the benefits of Savings Finder and Smart Mix are delivering to their corporate travel programs in the Egencia Analytics Studio. The data visualization and analytics service gives travel managers instant access to savings data per quarter, including both overall savings as well as breakdowns across top routes.
[1] North America rebooks during the initial 24 hour ‘void’ window