The pandemic has amply demonstrated the vitality of SMEs and SMIs, which were the first to resume business travel as soon as restrictions were lifted. A dynamic that has continued ever since This is of the utmost interest to the leaders in the hotel industry, who were previously more inclined to pamper large multinationals than to attract this source of corporate clientele. At the beginning of the year, the Hilton group demonstrated this with the worldwide launch of its Hilton for Businessa booking platform supported by its loyalty programme and integrated management tools.
If Marriott had started to offer a similar programme in the EMEA region from 2020 onwards, Marriott Bonvoy Business Readythe American group is going one step further, no longer confining itself to distributing its hotels to small and medium-sized businesses. Marriott moves into business travel agency territory with a comprehensive programme that has all the hallmarks of an online booking tool. Marriott hotels, of course, but also flights, train tickets and rental cars: the new Business Access by Marriott Bonvoy online portal, available from now on in North and Latin America as well as in the EMEA region, covers the main needs of a business traveller, as well as offering management tools for his or her company.
" We recognise the considerable value that small businesses bring to the hospitality industry, which is why we are delighted to combine the benefits of our travel programme with a complete suite of tools in Business Access by Marriott Bonvoy" said Osama Hirzalla, Vice President Sales and Distribution, EMEA, Marriott International.
Through a survey carried out by Wakefield Research in North America and the UK, Marriott had studied the main needs of small and medium-sized businesses in advance. Among the findings of this study, 75 % of the business travellers questioned said, for example, that they were frustrated by their travel booking platformsA good quarter of them regretted both the impossibility of booking transport and hotels in the same place and the lack of integration with their expense management tools. All these complaints explain why more than half of them prefer to book their travel off-channel.
To build its Business Access programme, Marriott relied on a rising star in the business travel industry, Spotnana, which said it was grateful to Marriott for choosing its technology. to offer a new-generation online booking experience for small and medium-sized business travellers" .
The facts, Spotnana has developed an API integration with Marriott, linking its Travel-as-a-Service platform to the American group's central reservation system. This enables travellers to be offered all hotels at discounted rates and with the benefits of the Marriott Bonvoy programme. Participating companies can be promoted to higher status once they have passed certain usage thresholds. " They can offer these rewards to their employees, who can enjoy the benefits of each level of Marriott Bonvoy Elite status reserved for members." explains the American hotelier.
Within this all-in-one platform, the online booking tool also enables SME employees to compare, book, manage and modify flight, train and car hire bookings. While Spotnana's API-first travel platform has been designed to be white-labelled and integrated with other websites and mobile applications, participants in the Business Access by Marriott Bonvoy are benefiting from Spotnana's relationships with various suppliers to the travel industry, and in particular from the integration of NDC distribution developed by Spotnana with the major airlines, including Air France-KLM since the end of June.
As for businesses, they will benefit from the various travel policy management solutions from Spotnana. As part of the benefits of Marriott's dedicated SME programme, travel managers will be able to define their company guidelines and manage spending limits. Real-time analysis sheds light on these expenses, with reports on carbon emissions from flights, trains and hire vehicles, in a spirit of CSR. The travel analysis tool can also be used to measure employee well-being and safety, with interactive maps providing information on potential disruptions, so that risks can be mitigated proactively.
Last but not least, the Business Access by Marriott Bonvoy programme is complemented by the possibility for businesses to integrate their own expense management platforms and make payments using virtual bank cards. This automates the generation of expense reports and facilitates the reconciliation of expenses.
