TRAVEL TECHNOLOGY
Huawei & Skyscanner | May 31, 2022
Huawei and Skyscanner entered a partnership to bring new flight search capabilities to Huawei users using Petal Search. This partnership will allow millions of travelers to find the best flights, hotels, and car hire options.
Skycanner has enhanced Petal Search and Petal Maps on the Huawei Mobile Services through its market-leading flight search capabilities. Its extensive network of over 1000 suppliers can help Huawei users easily search for and compare flights, hotels, and car hire options around the globe.
"We're pleased to be partnering with Huawei to be powering flight discovery in Petal Search with our industry leading API. Petal Search users will now be able to find millions of flight combinations to destinations throughout the world, all in the palm of their hands with the most competitive flight prices and fast results. Our collaboration comes at an important time for the travel industry and we're looking forward to winning both globally and locally together in the coming months and years ahead."
-Sonja Balcer, Director of Affiliate Marketing from Skyscanner
The Skyscanner integration will be available to 40 million monthly active users of Huawei Petal Search in 170 countries and over 28 million monthly active users of Petal Maps in 160 countries. It will be available in Europe before the rest of the world. Petal Search users can enjoy access to the same coverage, content, and competitive pricing just like native Skyscanner users.
"As tourism picks up and consumer confidence grows, we think this is the perfect time to encourage consumers to get back out there. We want to support adventurous mindsets by building new and existing partnerships with travel and search brands to help build Petal Search as an efficient and reliable travel companion,"
-Jaime Gonzalo, VP of Huawei Mobile Services Europe.
Jaime added: The arrival of Skyscanner to Petal Search showcases our commitment to providing our users with more choice, and sets a new milestone for our dedication to working with market leaders and innovators.
Petal Search leverages the latest technological innovation to provide consumers with cognitive search capabilities globally. It aims to provide a search experience populated with high-quality content and services, partnering with leading brands and businesses across all industries to make the everyday needs of Huawei users as effortless as possible.
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TRAVEL TECHNOLOGY
FocusPoint International | June 16, 2022
On June 15, FocusPoint International, a market-leading global assistance company, announced launch of its CAP Tripside Assistance (CAP) service plan at their recent ribbon-cutting ceremony inaugurating their new 22, 000 square foot South Florida headquarters and Crisis Response Center (CRC) located in Plantation, Fla.
The launch of this domestic travel protection package under CAP for vacations and excursions for Americans traveling within the USA is a result of the success of their international service plan. CAP offers advanced, international and domestic travel assistance and immediate response to stranded, in-crisis travelers
or those encountering merely the threat of crisis.
“Our goal is simple: to encourage international and domestic travel, and give peace of mind and security that allows our customers to enjoy the moment, create memories, and connect with the cultures and places they’ve planned for, We’ve long enjoyed success in servicing corporations and are now in a position to expand our market share by reaching leisure consumers all around the globe.”
-Greg Pearson, founder and CEO of FocusPoint International and CAP
CAP is fully indemnified by Lloyd’s of London. It is a full-service international and domestic travel protection for Americans traveling within the USA. It provides medical, and security assistance plans to cover different situations, either for short or extended periods, including, but not limited to:
24/7 unlimited live assistance with the Crisis Response Center (CRC) Assistance Hotline
Destination-based health, safety and security information via the CAP Advantage app
Home hospital of choice medical evacuations
Referrals to medical and legal experts, language interpreters, legal services, and prescription advice and assistance
Security evacuation services due to riots, strikes, civil commotion and more
Vehicle return for those requiring immediate evacuation back to their country of origin
Support for lost luggage or critical documents such as passports or visas
Hospital-to-hospital transfers and mandatory quarantine expense coverage due to COVID-19
Mortal remains repatriation services to your country of origin
FocusPoint was founded in 2011 and has served over 13 million customers across its network. It has been the choice of corporations, their C-suites, government dignitaries and other entities. They have 19 offices on five different continents and over 5, 000 proprietary and affiliate personnel in medical, security and crisis services.
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TRAVEL TECHNOLOGY
Fraugster | August 02, 2022
Fraugster, an AI payment intelligence company, together with Worldline, a global leader in secure payments and trusted transactions, has confidently enabled travel merchants to weather the storm of the Covid-19 pandemic with its Chargeback Protection Solution. The solution eliminates chargeback losses for merchants by taking full liability for fraudulent transactions. At the same time, advanced AI trained on global payment data makes more accurate decisions to boost approval rates. Innovations in machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) allow merchants to go-live without historical data by leveraging a new deep learning model.
With the outbreak of Covid-19, global travel was grounded. This caused mass cancellations and a scramble for refunds, but also created new opportunities for fraudsters to strike overburdened travel operators (hotels, airlines and OTAs), and take advantage of weak points in the system. In addition, there was a surge in so-called "angry chargebacks" where customers claim not to have authorised a transaction, usually in response to being frustrated by a cancellation or booking change. Covid-19 fraud patterns and consumer payment behaviour were significantly different to those pre-pandemic. Similarly, data inconsistencies limited the ability to identify and prevent certain types of fraud attacks like last minute cancellations on short term bookings. Chargeback rates jumped to over 3%, versus a baseline of under 0.5% in normal circumstances.
"Iberostar experienced a massive increase in fraud pressure during the pandemic. We were pleased that partners Fraugster and Worldline were able to act so quickly to design a new AI model specifically for us. In a few short months we reduced the Chargeback rate from 2.76% to 0.07%, which was a fantastic achievement,"
-Ferran Llompart, Corporate Treasury Director, Iberostar
Additional factors make chargeback protection more relevant than ever. The first is that the total cost of managing chargebacks has risen to nearly 3x of the original transaction value, according to a Fraugster analysis. For verticals like travel, where average order values are in excess of $750, this implies a total cost of over $2000 per fraudulent transaction.
Secondly, 80% of online merchants are reporting an increase in first party fraud (also referred to as "friendly fraud") where credit card credentials are intentionally or mistakenly abused. This trend is particularly acute in online gaming environments. These chargebacks are very difficult to prevent or mitigate and are costing companies margin, with limited recourse to recovering chargeback losses.
Together these trends are increasing merchants' exposure to chargeback liability and are driving up the total costs related to chargebacks. With Fraugster's Chargeback Protection solution merchants are able to significantly reduce the costs attributable to managing chargebacks, plus chargeback losses and fees, with little to no integration effort.
"Fraugster's approach to addressing chargebacks is to use a combination of machine learning and behavioral science to build a sharper picture of the transaction in question. This means merchants can provide a more seamless buying experience for legitimate customers while also preventing fraudulent transactions from getting through - this includes transactions that may turn into chargeback fraud later on, We are pleased that global brands have increased their revenue of between 5-16% since adopting Fraugster's Chargeback Protection solution product and report a steadier and more predictable financial coverage for chargebacks and bottom line impacts."
-Christian Mangold, CEO of Fraugster.
About Fraugster
Fraugster is a Berlin based payment intelligence company. Fraugster enables the world's leading merchants, global payment companies like Worldline and Ratepay to intelligently manage the impact of fraud to minimize the costs of fraud, maximize revenue and improve customer experience. Fraugster has developed one of the most accurate AI compliance, risk and fraud management and revenue uplift platforms in the market and is backed by leading deeptech investors including Earlybird, Speedinvest and CommerzVentures. Further information can be found at https://www.fraugster.com/
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