InterContinental Hotels Group Uses Distribution Channel to Connect to China OTA
In a move this week that further demonstrates the importance that global hotel brands are placing on appealing to the Chinese consumer, InterContinental Hotels Group began adding its entire portfolio of 4,600 properties around the world to Ctrip.com International, Ltd., China's largest online travel retailer, thanks to a reservations system connection designed and implemented by DerbySoft Inc.
Based in Dallas, Texas, and Shanghai, China, DerbySoft provides technology services to seven of the 10 largest hotel companies in the world and many of the world's largest online travel agencies (OTA). The InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) is the world’s largest hotel group by number of rooms.
This is DerbySoft's first such distribution channel connection to Ctrip, which is the largest OTA in China. Ctrip includes more than 250,000 hotels worldwide and services more than 60 million registered users. Online travel bookings in China overall are expected to reach nearly $14.4 billion this year, according to PhocusWright.
With 160 operating properties and 30% of its global pipeline in China, IHG recognized the need to directly connect its central reservations system (CRS) to China's largest travel portal allowing online booking of its properties for both outbound and inbound Chinese travelers. As a result of the DerbySoft connection to IHG’s CRS, Ctrip users will be able to view real time availability and receive an instant booking confirmation.
The XML-based connection between IHG and Ctrip, facilitated by DerbySoft, went live this week. Over the next several weeks, DerbySoft will continue rolling out IHG's 4,600 properties onto the Ctrip system.
DerbySoft builds highly customized electronic “pipelines” that transmit accurate room availability, rates, and inventory (ARI) from the hotel companies’ CRSs to third-party online booking channels, and in turn deliver the reservations made on the travel booking websites back to the hotel companies’ central reservations systems.
Founded in 2002, DerbySoft Inc., provides the technology that connects many of the world's largest hotel companies to many of the world's largest online travel booking services. As Internet hotel bookings continue to grow worldwide, global hotel companies such as Hilton, Marriott, and InterContinental Hotels, increasingly rely on DerbySoft's distributed and cloud-based technologies to process, manage and optimize the multitudes of reservation transactions originating from online travel agencies (OTAs) such as Booking.com and Travelocity.com, and meta-search sites such as Roomkey, Kayak, and Google, all the while minimizing the impact on the hotel company's technology infrastructure and resources. DerbySoft's U.S. headquarters are in Dallas (Coppell), and its worldwide technology headquarters are in Shanghai, China, where it also operates one of China's largest hotel central reservations systems,China's largest hotel central reservations systems, providing reservation distribution services to more than 1,000 Chinese local hotel properties.