AIRLINES AND AIRPORTS
prnewswire | March 30, 2023
AMTRAV, the one connected platform for business travel, today announced upgrades to its corporate booking solution to continue delivering travelers and corporate travel customers the full selection of American Airlines' flights and lowest fares, even as American changes how the carrier's flights can be booked through third party corporate booking platforms beginning in April.
In an effort to modernize the shopping experience for travelers, American Airlines recently mandated that all travel agencies use "New Distribution Capability" (NDC) technology to shop and sell American flights by April 2023. NDC was developed by airlines to distribute fares, offers, and other products online faster and with more transparency than the previous travel technology. For those booking tools not connected, travelers will lose access to up to 40% of American's lowest fares and face the tough choice: book higher American fares with their current provider in order to maintain spend and safety visibility or let travelers book lower American fares outside the system, but lose spend and safety visibility.
Although many legacy travel management companies (TMCs) have resisted transitioning – citing the difficulty and complexity – AmTrav has been an outspoken proponent of modernization for many years. In 2019, AmTrav became the first business travel platform to process NDC bookings with American and today is one of a very small number of providers ready to provide uninterrupted access to American's lowest fares.
"Business travel tools already have a perception problem among travelers, because so few corporate travel booking platforms have been willing to invest time and money to modernize the user experience," said AmTrav CEO Jeff Klee. "We've taken a different approach. Because we build all of our own technology with fewer dependencies on slow, legacy third party systems, we can deliver for our travelers the type of shopping experience they get when they book personal travel, while at the same time providing their companies with the visibility, control, and savings they need."
With its latest enhancements, AmTrav's "NDC ready" solution, more than ever, brings business travelers and their companies:
Lower Fares on American: Booking tools that have not tapped into American's NDC content will be more expensive 40% of the time.
Access to All of American's Fare Brands: Compare and choose from the full menu of American's offerings, including the new Main Plus and Main Select bundles which include free extra legroom seats, among other benefits.
Full Choice of Seats: Get access to every available seat, including Preferred and Main Cabin Extra, with perks from your AAdvantage status (if applicable) automatically factored in.
Personalized Comparison-Shopping: A rich, complete comparison-shopping experience to help travelers make smart choices with details, photos, and reviews to inform fare rules, fees, seat size, WiFi, entertainment, and so much more.
Full Visibility and Control: Like any other booking, American NDC bookings work seamlessly with AmTrav's real-time reporting, travel policy and approval flows, unused ticket tracking, and traveler locator services, keeping travel managers and C-suite execs happy.
About AmTrav
AmTrav is an award-winning, modern technology and service platform designed to make business travel personal and productive. Companies of all sizes use AmTrav to book trips, find savings, set travel policies, manage payments and expenses, and keep their travelers safe. Travelers and companies love AmTrav's powerful platform that provides a seamless travel management experience supported by our experts who are always ready to help 24x7. More than 1000 businesses trust AmTrav to go places, meet people, and go further.
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TRAVEL TECHNOLOGY
prnewswire | April 18, 2023
Wind Creek Hospitality announced today a partnership with Fabio Viviani Hospitality, LLC to operate the food and beverage outlets at Wind Creek Chicago Southland, located in the Villages of East Hazel Crest and Homewood.
Viviani, who has participated in multiple seasons of Bravo's Top Chef and also has his own cooking show, Fabio's Kitchen, has over 50 locations of various offerings in his portfolio, many of which are in the Chicago area.
"Bringing in a partner like Fabio Viviani to our Chicago Southland property is a home run for our food and beverage offerings. Fabio's expertise in the hospitality industry will give Wind Creek Chicago Southland an unmatched competitive edge," said acting General Manager, Roger Kuehn.
"We are delighted to be collaborating with Wind Creek on their Southland property! It's an impressive project and the fact that it's in my hometown of Chicago makes it even more appealing. We look forward to sharing more details with you soon. Something truly special is in the works," said Fabio Viviani.
The partnership will include a steakhouse, food hall, in-room dining as well as banquets. Wind Creek Chicago Southland is expected to open in Spring 2024.
ABOUT WIND CREEK HOSPITALITY
Wind Creek Hospitality is an authority of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians, the only federally recognized Indian Tribe in the state of Alabama. Wind Creek Hospitality manages the Tribe's gaming facilities including: Wind Creek Aruba, Wind Creek Atmore, Wind Creek Bethlehem, Wind Creek Chicago Southland (Coming Soon), Wind Creek Curacao, Wind Creek Montgomery, Wind Creek Wetumpka, Casinoverse, Magic City Casino in FL, as well as racetracks in Alabama and Florida. Visit www.windcreek.com for more information.
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TRAVEL TECHNOLOGY
businesswire | May 22, 2023
Glassbox a leading provider of digital experience analytics for web and mobile applications, today announces the release of its report, Beyond the Booking: A Look Inside Digital Experience for Travelers, highlighting consumers’ pain points when digitally booking travel. Aimed at uncovering the interactions or roadblocks that cause travelers to abandon their customer journey, the survey of 1,000 U.S. consumers found that 72% of respondents prioritize easy-to-use search filters when booking travel. These insights underscore consumers’ frustrations and preferences when it comes to travel.
The survey shows that the convenience of on-hand mobile technology has encouraged preferential booking on native mobile apps among Millennials and Gen Z respondents – 49% of Millennials and 44% of Gen Z noted a preference for booking travel via mobile app. Similarly, data from a leading hotel brand uncovered conversion rates from native mobile apps were almost double that of conversions from desktop web.
Additional Glassbox data highlights include:
Easy-to-use search filters (72%), price comparison tools (69%) and flexible booking options (62%) are top features respondents consider essential in a hotel/travel website or mobile app.
Consumers are increasingly likely to try rentals like Airbnb or VRBO if dates or rooms desired are not shown as available when trying to book – roughly 1 in 3 across Gen X, Millennial and Gen Z respondents.
When consumers hit roadblocks with a digital booking, 40% will simply turn to another hotel/travel website, app or booking engine.
Travelers signed into a hotel or booking website are more than 5X as likely to finish a booking as those who do not, according to a leading hotel brand working with Glassbox.
"Our data overall is showing that travelers will abandon bookings due to poor experiences on both website and mobile applications,” says Glassbox CMO Asim Zaheer. “On top of this, they are very specific in what they expect their booking experience to be and what pain points would cause them to turn away pretty immediately. Travel and hospitality brands need to leverage this kind of data to better understand what a seamless user experience looks like for today's travelers, in order to meet their evolving needs and expectations.”
According to a study conducted by Google, as page load time goes from one second to five seconds, the probability of bounce increases by 90%. If a page takes more than 5 seconds to load, there is a high chance visitors will leave the website. Slow load times are the top issue Glassbox’s survey respondents experience (46%) when using a hotel/travel website or mobile app. This is followed by 42% who said difficulty finding relevant information, and 35% who cited confusing navigation as their main pain points.
Consumers’ digital journeys are becoming more and more complex. It’s crucial to optimize website and mobile app speed as well as offer easy search, price comparison and flexible navigation to improve user experience and reduce bounce rates.
About Glassbox
Glassbox reveals the insights that empower organizations to deliver better digital customer experiences. Our Digital Experience Intelligence platform automatically captures, visualizes and analyzes every digital journey in real time across websites and mobile apps. It serves as the unifying platform for product, UX, marketing, IT, analytics teams (and more) to assess performance, prioritize projects and optimize experiences. With unparalleled data privacy and security built in, hundreds of global customers across industries have chosen Glassbox to grow and optimize their digital businesses.
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