Traxo and Smart Hotel Rate Partner to Automatically Apply Corporate Negotiated Rates and Discounts to Direct Hotel Bookings

Dallas-based Traxo, Inc., a provider of real-time corporate travel data capture and intelligence, announced a partnership with New York-based Smart Hotel Rate^TM to launch a solution that automatically ensures corporate negotiated rates and discounts are applied when employees make their hotel reservations directly with the company's preferred hotel suppliers.

"The reality is that nearly half of all hotels are booked out of program today,” said Andres Fabris, Traxo’s Chief Executive Officer. “Traxo detects these previously invisible bookings and Smart Hotel Rate provides corporate travel managers with much needed visibility while simultaneously ensuring participating hotels proactively honor a company’s corporate negotiated rates and discounts prior to check-in – ensuring the whole process works as intended."

"It's not uncommon for a corporate travel department to spend six months negotiating worldwide discounts with its preferred hotel suppliers," said Smart Hotel Rate Co-founder John Packel. "Then, on average, 25 percent of the time, the negotiated rate or discount is not honored or booked, which leaves savings on the table.  Making the situation even worse, the missed savings are not noticed until after the employee returns from their business trip."

This new Traxo and Smart Hotel Rate solution, which is provided at no cost to the corporation, fixes this longstanding industry problem by providing an automated, real-time rate verification of direct hotel bookings as they occur, empowering travel managers to more comprehensively monitor their negotiated rate programs, address rate discrepancies pre-trip, and realize immediate savings. Accurate visibility into the volume of room nights booked can also help both the travel buyer and hotel with measuring the hotel rate program's true effectiveness, and aid in better tuning the following year's rate and discount program.

With the new solution in place, when a business traveler books directly with a hotel, that reservation is instantly detected and processed by Traxo. In addition to ensuring hotel details are routed to the client's duty-of-care provider, which most companies require, Traxo then securely transmits the booking details to Smart Hotel Rate.  Within seconds, Smart Hotel Rate auto-detects incorrect or missing negotiated rate savings by comparing the booked rate to their client's corporate negotiated rate program and alerts the hotel to correct the issue prior to the traveler's arrival. "This means there are no rate discrepancies or frustration at check-in, resulting in happier travelers and significant savings for the company," noted Mr. Packel.

"While RFPs and hotel rate contracts are still necessary for now, the real magic happens when corporate travel managers can see, in real time, exactly what rates were actually booked, even when employees book their hotels outside of the company's managed travel program."

The combined Traxo/Smart Hotel Rate solution is straightforward and simple to implement -- there is no hotel integration required. The new partnership and integration between Smart Hotel Rate and Traxo also means Smart Hotel Rate is now a Traxo Marketplace partner, enabling any Traxo corporate customer to easily implement the Smart Hotel Rate negotiated rate detection services.