SiteMinder today announced the highly anticipated release of its next generation state-of-the-art distribution platform to the global hotel industry. Being unveiled at World Travel Market in London this week, the new platform is set to challenge conventional thinking in automated distribution of hotel rooms to leading booking channels.
“The platform is a major step forward in providing unique functionality to users that has not been made available in any other channel management systems to date. The new system offers a fully transparent dashboard onto everything happening in the underlying switch, from Hoteliers being able to instantly see channel connectivity status, right up to the ability to seamlessly connect rooms from their PMS/CRS to the Channel Rooms in real time,” says Mike Ford, Managing Director of SiteMinder. “What we have done is given full control to the hotelier, to the extent that they do not need to rely on a support desk to connect rooms to channels or to inform them of issues in channel connectivity. This translates into the hotelier being able to launch new offers on booking sites and have them connected back to the channel manager and PMS with a few clicks of the mouse. ” continues Ford.
SiteMinder, who began operating in 2006, now has over 5,000 properties in more than 70 countries using their cloud based, zero-transaction-fee technology, to increase online revenue, improve business efficiencies and significantly drive down the cost of acquisition.
Mr. Ford also said, “We are proud of leading innovation in our industry and challenging traditional views on what channel management technology can do. For several years from early 2000, the channel management industry was traditionally characterized by a handful of technology providers that failed to innovate effectively and were over-charging for what they offered. We found hoteliers were selecting these legacy offerings due lack of alternatives, but times have changed with hoteliers increasingly savvy and wise as to what they want and they are no longer settling for sub-par technology. This has created an enormous opportunity for us, particularly in the area of integrating online booking channels with the hotel CRS, PMS and Revenue Management systems, an area we specialize in. We are having an amazing time continually innovating our products to satiate the demand hoteliers have for smarter, faster and more reliable distribution tools.”