What is the focus for SRS-WORLDHOTELS this year?
In the past we tended to be a B2B company. One objective is to become more consumer focused.
This is partly done by us and partly by the hotels.
At the end of the year, we will be rebranding and concentrating more on the WORLDHOTELS aspect to create a brand name people can identify with. At the same time, we will be promoting consumer guaranteed rates through the website.
Where are you looking for new members?
Right now we have 17 hotels in China, and we have an ambitious plan to have 50 hotels within three years. The priority is Shanghai where we currently only have one member and then the secondary cities such as Hangzhou, Chengdu and Chongqing.
We are also focusing on the China outbound market which is one reason we opened an office in Shanghai in January. China outbound business is currently in the single digits, but it is an area where we are spending more resources and time to develop.
How do you attract corporate travellers to your member properties?
This is mainly done through a core base of sales agents around the world who ensure we are on the preferred list of hotels for corporate travellers.
Increasingly corporations are building their own Intranets and we have to ensure we are on the list of preferred hotels and provide inventory to them. Distribution and reservations used to be the forgotten part of the business, but now it is uppermost in the minds of hoteliers as they try to ensure they are on all the screens they need to be on.
If they ignore distribution, they get the marketshare no one else wants.
What other trends in corporate travel?
Corporate travel is still very region-centric with Asia-Pacific travellers staying within the region and US travellers staying in the US, especially over the past 18 months.
We are also seeing increasing numbers of corporate travellers from China, and while people used to be preoccupied with where the US market was, now they want the China market.
The Chinese corporates tend to go to Hong Kong, Singapore and Bangkok – the usual hub cities. If they do go further abroad, it is to follow the trade fairs in Europe.
What new products does SRS have for corporate travellers?
We developed a system called WORLDLINK which we recently launched in Europe but we do not have any active clients in Asia yet.
It is a complete front-end travel management system for third-party clients with content on member hotels together with a real-time booking engine that users can access 24 hours a day. Room availability and rates are displayed in real time.
The client can request the entire database of members of a smaller selection of hotels which are better suited to their travellers.
Member hotels choose what rates they want to display. They can also choose to bypass guarantee of reservations with credit card.
Clients receive detailed production reports and have the option of personalising the site with the company logo, text style and colour.
WORLDLINK was developed for Volkswagen. We put a link within the corporate Intranet which takes travellers to all the hotels and the negotiated rates. The booking then goes to SRS and we take it from there. That rolled out in Europe at the beginning of 2004.
In Asia there is no active client as yet, as we feel there is still more of a reliance on travel management companies so we work closely with them.
