Worldspan has enhanced its Worldspan Hotel Select booking system to enhance the solution that presents travel agents with the largest pool of hotel content available from a single source. Hotel Select is fortified with new shopping capabilities and hotel suppliers to lend agents a more powerful hotel shopping experience and help increase agency revenues.

“Worldspan continues to deliver advanced solutions that support and enhance electronic hotel bookings worldwide,” said Kathy Fitzpatrick, Worldspan vice president, North America. “It is a priority to provide Worldspan agencies the most progressive shopping and booking tools, and the broadest selection of content to help grow their businesses.”

Higher Revenues with Net Rates: Worldspan Hotel Select has introduced new functionality that enables travel agents to request net rates from hotel suppliers that support the new capability. Access to net rates gives agents the opportunity to increase revenues by marking up room rates before sale to the customer.

Finding Hotels Fast with Fuzzy Name Searches: Worldspan travel agents no longer need to know full or exact names of the hotels, resorts or other accommodations in the global Hotel Select hotel database. A new Hotel Name Search entry invoked by the agent in the availability request adds fuzzy search intelligence to the shopping process. The new functionality quickly identifies intended properties or brands in the system, reducing search time for agents, and eliminating phone calls to hotel suppliers for information.

Setting Agency-Wide Hotel Search Parameters: Travel agency office managers or team leaders can use the new Hotel Default Record Edits tool to personally control which hotel brands are viewed and booked by their travel agents. The tool promotes the sale of preferred brands and negotiated rates, and supports the policies of agency clients. It also builds efficiency for agents by quickly returning preferred brands in availability displays.

Shopping for Specific Amenities: Travel agents can find ideal properties for business and leisure travellers with five new amenity fields, bringing the total of searchable amenities to 71. Agents can now request hotels with in-room, high-speed Internet (DSL) or wireless access, including whether the service has a fee or is free to hotel guests. Also added is the ability to specify properties that include breakfast as part of the room rate.

New Suppliers Bookable in Hotel Select include: Club Quarters, Derag Hotels, Dorchester Hotel, Hospitality Solutions, HotelRez, Luxury Accommodations, Resort Condominiums, ResortQuest, Sandman Hotels, Summerfield Suites, Univisti Inc. and WebRes.

Worldspan Hotel Select is the comprehensive hotel booking solution that provides travel agents with live connections to hotel companies worldwide, including real-time rate range, rate rules and availability status for tens of thousands of properties. Beyond traditional hotel content, Worldspan agents use the global distribution system (GDS) industry’s first hotel mapping and map-top booking capabilities. They also have access to hotel videos, 360¡ virtual tours, slide shows, and more for specific properties and destinations. Further, Worldspan helps agents select accommodations through a rich Hotel Images database.
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