FastBooking Engine Drives Hotel+Flight Dynamic Package for Caribbean Travel Specialist

On the “Des Hôtels et des Iles” website, vacation bookings begin with room selection. “Flight selection follows availability. Why book a flight only to find there are no rooms?”

Paris, France—June 08, 2011— FastBooking, the European leader and one of the world’s top four online e-marketing and solutions providers for the hospitality industry, announces the creation of a special “Hotel + Fly” reservation service for the Caribbean travel specialist, “Des Hôtels et des Iles”.

“We’ve been working with FastBooking since 2003 and our online growth has consistently been in double digits. Over the years they’ve really helped us move our business forward. Of course, when we asked them to extend the booking engine functionality to help us develop this new service they more than successfully rose to the challenge,” says Carole Adam, Vice President Sales & Marketing for “Des Hôtels et des Iles”.

Starting with the industry leading FastBooking Engine, the new system incorporates hotel-only or hotel + flight reservation functionality. “Hotel availability determines flight selection. Why book a flight only to find there are no rooms available,” remarks Carole Adam.

Reservations for destination resorts like those in the “Des Hôtels et des Iles” Caribbean portfolio are typically made months in advance. If the traveler’s first hotel selection is unavailable, the FastBooking Engine automatically recommends other hotels in the group with availability for the same dates (cross selling). “This is a key functionality for us. Once a traveler is on our website, we want to be sure they book with us. Giving them alternatives in the same location increases the conversion rate,” explains Carole Adam.

Additional CRS modules within the FastBooking Engine help travelers select special offers or thematic holidays, make spa, golf and restaurant reservations. “Clients have a better experience with the hotel, greater feeling of satisfaction and peace-of-mind when they can reserve these additional services along with their rooms,” says Tony Grippon, Director, FastBooking Revenue Optimization Service.

To accommodate this complexity—hotel-only and hotel + flight bookings--FastBooking created what are effectively two booking funnels. This ‘virtual separation’ allows Carole Adams and her team to easily quantify hotel-only and hotel + flight reservations.

Whether the traveler is booking just the hotel portion of their trip or coupling it with air transportation, once they hit the reserve button, the booking will be automatically integrated into the specific hotel’s PMS and a confirmation email will automatically be sent to the client. For travelers booking hotel + flight, FastBooking developed a specific cancellation link (via XML) to ensure this process runs smoothly for the individual hotels and their clients, when necessary.

Once the hotel portion reservation portion is completed, all the booking information is transferred via XML to a site created by “Des Hôtels et des Iles” partner, Add Works, where it is later combined with the flight portion of the itinerary. Clients continuing with flight selection are seamlessly transferred to a separate reservation system where, based on GDS feeds from the more than xx airlines they can make their transportation arrangements. Because airlines require online payments, this portion is handled for “Des Hôtels et des Iles” via PayBox. Online payment security is ensured by TMS.

“A big part of destination travel is the fantasy in the planning stages. With the solution created for us by FastBooking, the end result is a seamless, pleasant experience as for our clients as they reserve their vacation and activities. We’re able to provide them with end-to-end travel services,” says Carole Adam.

About FastBooking
Since 2000, FastBooking has been the preferred partner to hotelkeepers worldwide, driving more visitors to hotel websites and converting these visitors to direct bookings. FastBooking products and services optimize a hotel’s business by maximizing highly profitable direct website bookings, then rationalize inventory and pricing across all online sales channels. The company even optimizes business through legacy GDS/IDS with a cost effective service.

Headquartered in Paris with subsidiaries in Italy, the USA, Singapore, Japan and India, the company has E. de Rothschild as its anchor investor. It employs 200 persons worldwide and has gained the trust of more than 6,000 hotel clients.

For more information, visit the FastBooking corporate website at www.fastbooking.net

Des Hotels et des Iles
120 rue de la Boétie
75008 Paris
France

Press Contact:
Deborah Gallin
dgallin@fastbooking.net
+33 (0)1 44 71 88 83

This release was published on openPR.