Travel Technology
Hyatt Hotels | September 22, 2023
Hyatt Hotels Corporation embarks on a strategic expansion journey with over 30 luxury and lifestyle hotels planned for the Americas by 2025.
The brand's rapid growth includes doubling luxury room inventory and increasing lifestyle rooms, making it a premier choice for high-end travelers.
The strategic acquisitions of Mr & Mrs Smith and Dream Hotel Group enhance Hyatt's offerings for members of the World of Hyatt.
The Hyatt Hotels Corporation has strengthened the brand with ambitious plans to expand its luxury and lifestyle presence throughout the Americas. With a robust development pipeline encompassing more than 30 planned hotels and resorts slated for completion by 2025, Hyatt is poised to make a significant impact. This strategic initiative includes venturing into new markets, reflecting the company's unwavering commitment to enhancing its brand offerings. Over the past half-decade, Hyatt has achieved remarkable milestones on a global scale, including doubling luxury room inventory, tripling the number of resort rooms, and quadrupling the availability of lifestyle rooms. The momentum behind this growth shows no signs of abating. Hyatt now proudly stands as the fastest-growing luxury portfolio, with luxury, lifestyle, and resort properties constituting over 40% of its extensive portfolio. This success solidifies Hyatt's position as the ultimate choice for discerning high-end travelers seeking unparalleled experiences.
This brand expansion has new properties in sought-after destinations, including the Hyatt Centric Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, Cas en Bas Beach Resort in Saint Lucia, and Hyatt Centric Querétaro in Mexico. Additionally, Hyatt is introducing Boundless Collection hotels, featuring Thompson Hotels in various U.S. and Mexican locations. Timeless Collection hotels will offer a home away from home experience, with Park Hyatt Los Cabos in Mexico and Grand Hyatt Scottsdale in Arizona among the highlights. The Inclusive Collection will welcome new resorts in the Caribbean and Mexico, including Secrets St. Lucia Resort & Spa and more. Several luxury and lifestyle Hyatt hotels have recently opened in the Americas, with exciting additions like Andaz Mexico City Condesa and Dreams Flora Resort & Spa in Punta Cana. The Fordson Hotel in Oklahoma City will soon join The Unbound Collection by Hyatt.
Hyatt's transformative growth journey extends further through strategic acquisitions that enhance the offerings for its valued guests and members. The recent acquisition of Mr & Mrs Smith, a global travel platform renowned for its curated collection of boutique and luxury properties, is a testament to Hyatt's commitment to delivering exceptional experiences. This move significantly enriches the choices available to World of Hyatt members, providing them with an even more comprehensive array of rewarding stays and memorable experiences. In addition to this, Hyatt's earlier acquisition of Dream Hotel Group in early 2023 has opened up new horizons for World of Hyatt members, enabling them to access an expanded portfolio of stay options and lifestyle experiences in vibrant destinations like Nashville, Hollywood, South Beach, and New York City.
Additionally, this acquisition catalyzes Hyatt's brand expansion into an emerging leisure market in Mexico, with the upcoming Dream Valle de Guadalupe (slated for 2024). Nestled across 35 sprawling acres in the picturesque Baja California region, this property will feature a sprawling vineyard, 61 well-appointed guestrooms and villas, a luxurious spa and wellness facility, and a trio of vibrant dining and nightlife venues, including an exclusive tasting room and pool bar.
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Travel Technology
businesswire | July 25, 2023
Emburse, a leader in travel and expense (T&E) management, has acquired TRIPBAM, the industry’s only provider of fully automated, always-on auditing technology to track and review corporate travel pre-trip spend, corporate negotiated discounts, and supplier contracts.
TRIPBAM’s technology constantly tracks and compares current prices with customers’ travel reservations and automatically rebooks a flight or hotel room if a lower price is available. It has tracked more than 30 million corporate travel bookings to date, representing over $30 billion in spend. TRIPBAM’s solutions have helped more than 2,000 customers, including Aon, Elevance Health and Microsoft, to automatically save in excess of $500 million.
The acquisition of TRIPBAM makes Emburse an even stronger partner for travel and finance leaders, supporting their efforts to better manage spend and proactively control travel costs. With TRIPBAM, Emburse’s 18,000+ customers can add flight and hotel rebooking to the T&E process, providing the lowest prices for their travel plans.
“On the heels of the pandemic, businesses are seeing a strong desire for more employee travel, but a turbulent economy has CFOs and finance leaders looking for ways to keep those costs down without slowing the business, which is exactly what Emburse and TRIPBAM enable," said Eric Friedrichsen, CEO of Emburse. "I'm excited about this acquisition because our combined solution puts the power of automation, AI and data in the hands of our customers so that they can focus on their business instead of the busywork of trying to manage spend manually."
“When looking for the best way to help bring TRIPBAM to the next stage of its journey, we knew that we needed to join an organization that has a strong track record of global growth and could support the world’s biggest brands,” said Steve Reynolds, CEO and founder of TRIPBAM. “In Emburse, we found a similarly entrepreneurial, customer-centric organization that is challenging the status quo with new ways of thinking and a great suite of products. With Eric’s leadership and Emburse’s team and resources, we can continue to expand our global reach and find new ways of saving our customers money.”
Friedrichsen added, “With TRIPBAM’s innovative solutions and talented team onboard, we can further accelerate the pace of innovation, which is good for both our business and our customers. I see this union driving significant value for everyone, and am very pleased to welcome Steve and his team into Emburse. The future of our business has never looked better!”
“Our goal at MSTravel is to make business travel employee friendly, while minimizing environmental impact and delivering financial value to Microsoft,” said Eric Bailey, Global Director - Employee Travel and Devices at Microsoft. “Emburse Go Premier allows our employees to manage every aspect of their trip through a single app, while TRIPBAM delivers savings through rebooking at lower rates. Accessibility and uptime are critical, so both of these solutions running on Microsoft Azure gives us peace of mind. I’m excited to see what the future holds for TRIPBAM as a part of Emburse.”
About Emburse
Emburseis a leader in travel and expense management. Our expense, travel management, accounts payable, and payments solutions are trusted by more than 12 million business professionals, including CFOs, finance teams, and travelers. More than 18,000 organizations in 120 countries, including FORTUNE 100 and Global 2000 corporations, public sector agencies, nonprofits, and high-growth small businesses count on our intelligent automation, sophisticated analytics, and unmatched spend control to streamline processes, increase spend visibility, enhance compliance, and deliver positive financial outcomes.
We eliminate manual, time-consuming tasks, so our customers and their teams can focus on what matters most in their personal and professional lives. We humanize work.
About TRIPBAM
TRIPBAM is the leading travel technology provider for reducing hotel costs and optimizing hotel programs. TRIPBAM's advanced analytics, benchmarking, and contract auditing capabilities empower companies to save on travel spend without compromising on corporate culture. More than 2,000 companies across the globe trust TRIPBAM’s technology to stay on top of supplier agreements, boost compliance, negotiate new contracts, and save both time and money.
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Travel Technology
businesswire | June 30, 2023
Spotnana, the modern infrastructure for the travel industry, today announced it has partnered with United Airlines to develop a direct NDC integration that delivers seamless end-to-end traveler journeys via NDC. Spotnana’s direct integration to United’s NDC API supports personalized travel booking experiences, self-service post-ticketing changes, real-time analytics, and comprehensive servicing capabilities delivered through Spotnana’s modern retailing experience.
“We’re thrilled to partner with United Airlines to deliver an approach to modern retailing that goes far beyond booking tickets through a next-generation storefront,” said Sarosh Waghmar, Founder and CEO of Spotnana. “We have built the deepest direct NDC integration to date with United, and we will continue to work together to innovate and push the boundaries of what’s possible.”
Spotnana’s Travel-as-a-Service Platform now supports United NDC-based offers throughout all stages of a trip both on a self-service basis and fully assisted by travel agents. Key features of the advanced NDC integration between United and Spotnana include:
Continuous pricing - access to 40% more price points from United that are the same or lower than fares available via EDIFACT-based distribution channels.
Negotiated rates and bundles - the ability to display corporate negotiated rates as well as custom bundles that can include amenities such as WiFi, Economy Plus, Premier access, and more.
Entitlement shopping - personalized shopping experiences based on traveler loyalty status, such as a seat map that extends complimentary access to Economy Plus seats for travelers that have Premier Gold MileagePlus status or higher.
Self-service changes and cancellations - capability for travelers to cancel or make changes post-ticketing to flights, dates, cities, seats, Known Traveler Number, or loyalty program number without agent assistance.
Comprehensive servicing - agents have access to the same capabilities for booking, changing, and canceling NDC fares as the travelers they serve.
Carrier ticketing - ensures agents can seamlessly service bookings even if previous changes were made by United or on a United channel, enabling travelers to be serviced wherever they prefer. Waiver codes are automatically applied when United is responsible for a flight change.
Integrated real-time analytics - travelers and travel managers can view and download real-time reports with integrated data across NDC and EDIFACT-based bookings.
“We want our products to be available in channels where our customers want to buy them. As a part of that effort, we’re collaborating with industry partners like Spotnana to provide a more contemporary shopping environment through NDC,” says Doreen Burse, United’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales. “With this exciting integration, Spotnana’s platform now supports United NDC-based offerings to provide a more seamless experience for our customers, from booking to servicing.”
Through its modern architecture, Spotnana has eliminated the need for PNR comments and mid-office operations that make it difficult to support NDC and EDIFACT-based content side-by-side. As a result, travelers benefit from a seamless booking and servicing experience across all types of content.
About Spotnana
Founded in 2020, Spotnana, a software development company for travel, offers solutions for enterprise software, infrastructure, business travel, corporate travel, and travel technology. It gives an exceptional global travel experience. It modernized the infrastructure of the travel industry for freedom and simplicity of travel. Its travel-as-a-service platform makes travel more simple and more affordable for corporations. It connects travel agencies, suppliers, and technology solutions provider partners for operational efficiency. Its ecosystem unlocks new revenue sources and innovations. It has developed advanced cloud-based travel technology dedicated to the needs of travelers.
About United
At United, Good Leads The Way℠. With U.S. hubs in Chicago, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, New York/Newark, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., United operates the most comprehensive global route network among North American carriers, and is now the largest airline in the world as measured by available seat miles.
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