DESTINATION AND TOURISM
Trek Travel | July 28, 2022
Arch RoamRight Travel Insurance today announced that Trek Travel, a leading luxury cycling vacations tour operator in North America, has selected Arch RoamRight as its primary travel insurance provider.Trek Travel customers now have access to Arch RoamRight’s travel insurance protection plan and award-winning customer service and claims teams when they book through Trek Travel. Arch RoamRight’s plans offer protection against financial losses caused by trip cancellations and interruptions, coverage for baggage and personal effects, and 24/7 global travel and medical emergency assistance.
“Adventure travel continues to grow as more travelers wish to create lifetime memories and experiences, We’re pleased to offer our travel protection through Trek Travel, providing our excellent travel insurance to their valued customers.”
-Cory Sobczyk, Vice President of Business Development, Arch RoamRight
Trek Travel guests interested in purchasing Arch RoamRight’s travel insurance to help protect their travel plans can work with their trained trip consultants to understand and purchase coverage that meets their specific travel needs.
“We’re thrilled to be working with Arch RoamRight as they have demonstrated a track record of exemplary customer service, technology innovation and responsiveness,” said Rich Snodsmith, Director of Sales for Trek Travel. “Our partnership with Arch RoamRight provides our travelers with confidence, knowing that they are protected if an unexpected event happens that prevents them from going on their trip, or an unfortunate mishap occurs during their trip.”
About Arch RoamRight
Arch RoamRight (www.RoamRight.com) is the co-branding of Arch and RoamRight® marks used by Arch Insurance Company to market its travel insurance that insures U.S. residents traveling around the world. From trip cancellation to travel medical insurance plans and an award-winning mobile app and website, Arch RoamRightTM is an industry leader in innovation and technological solutions. In 2021, Arch RoamRight won multiple American Business Awards® and was named one of the Best in Travel Insurance for 2021 by Money.com.
About Trek Travel
Trek Travel provides cycling vacations of a lifetime in the world’s most beautiful destinations. From luxury experiences to easygoing self-guided adventures, the bike tour brand has a trip for every rider out there. Their trips include the use of award-winning Trek bicycles, including e-bikes, so you can ride the best routes with the best gear. Trek Travel has been crafting unforgettable cycling vacations for 20 years, and was most recently recognized by Travel + Leisure’s World’s Best Awards 2022 as one of the top tour operators in the world.
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BUSINESS TRAVEL
Optii Solutions | June 13, 2022
On June 8, Optii Solutions, a market leader in hotel operations software, announced the onboarding of two hotels in the Pebblebrook Hotel Trust; Hotel Chamberlain West Hollywood and Hotel Ziggy, in their hotel operations solution. Optii will help them maximize their housekeeping efficiencies and comply with the new West Hollywood Ordinance that governs workers’ rights.
Optii has a contract with another Pebblebrook group hotel- Montrose West Hollywood. It has successfully helped Montrose streamline its operations with limited staff and adapt to the Ordinance. Springboard Hospitality manages all the three hotels that are members of the Curator Hotels & Resorts Collection.
The West Hollywood Ordinance came into force on January 1 and imposed limits on square footage cleaned and the number of checkouts completed by each room attendant during an eight-hour workday. If these limits exceed, the hoteliers must pay their staff twice their pay for every hour worked. This doubles housekeeping costs for hotels that do not comply with these restrictions.
Optii’s housekeeping platform uses AI to allocate rooms to room attendants based on square footage efficiently. It also set limits for each attendant so that no team member exceeds the Ordinance guidelines. Optii’s platform also offers reporting on both the square footage and number of rooms that an attendant cleans to ensure compliance. A breakdown of departure cleans for each workday, as well as archived boards and data for customer life, is also provided.
“Housekeeping departments represent the largest cost for hoteliers and failure to comply with the West Hollywood Ordinance can mean that these costs skyrocket. We are pleased to be expanding our relationship with Pebblebrook Hotel Trust and helping this group of hotels comply simply and easily.”
-Katherine Grass, CEO, Optii Solutions
Andrew Maffei, Area General Manager, Chamberlain or Hotel Ziggy, said: Our staff are our most important asset and making best use of their time is one of our top priorities. We are excited to be implementing Optii’s technology to ensure our housekeeping team is working efficiently and that we are always fully compliant with the new Ordinance requirements.
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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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