A Cheshire West hospitality tech firm has signed a trans-Atlantic partnership which will help hotels win lost room sales back from third-party booking sites.
Ellesmere Port-based Hop Software, co-founded by UK hoteliers, has penned a partnership which will see its award-winning Property Management System teamed with the metasearch expertise of leading Utah GCommerce firm, Metadesk.
The partnership will enable hotels and resorts to increase direct room bookings by giving them an optimised presence on key platforms such as Google Hotel Ads, TripAdvisor and Trivago.
“We are delighted, firstly, for our customers that Metadesk has chosen to partner with our award-winning Property Management System because the strategic link offers so much potential,” said Hop chief operating officer, Sharon Smith, who is based at the company HQ at Venture Point near Cheshire Oaks.
Google Hotel ads, integrated into Google apps like Maps and Travel, account for between 65 and 85 per cent of all hotel search traffic, globally, and online booking sites spend billions to maintain a dominant presence.
However, while these booking sites facilitate room sales for hotels, they currently charge 18 per cent for every booking generated through their platform, meaning loss of revenue for hotels in a challenging trading environment.
By integrating their cloud-based Property Management System and Booking Engine with the Metadesk GCommerce platform, Hop’s customers will benefit from Metadesk’s 20+ years of boosting client’s performance on Google Hotel ads and other metasearch platforms.
This will, in turn, enable hotels to increase the proportion of guests who book directly, thereby reducing high commission fees and over-reliance on third party sites.
For the full story, see Chester Standard