Tourico Holidays has introduced an online tool enabling hotels to bid against each other in real time for an agent’s small-group bookings.

Tourico Holidays has introduced an online tool enabling hotels to bid against each other in real time for an agent’s small-group bookings.

Agents using Tourico’s online Group Bidding Engine (GBE) log in to the Tourico website where they can query up to seven hotels for bids. They can choose from hotels based on criteria that include location, price range and category.

Hotels have 24 hours to respond by logging in to Tourico’s supplier extranet; while there, they can see what their competitors are bidding and can modify their bids, dropping the price or adding in a free benefit such as breakfast accordingly.

Major group players such as Zentila and HotelPlanner, which partners with Expedia’s Hotels.com, do not offer such transparency, nor do hotel aggregators who work closely with agents. CCRA Travel has an online group booking tool, but it does not offer transparency to responding hotels. ABC Global Services does not have group sourcing available, although it has something in the works for later this year.

Major tour operators such as Funjet Vacations and Apple Vacations provide group booking services but not an automated system, although Apple is working on one.

Christopher Anderson, associate professor at the Cornell School of Hotel Administration, said that online group booking tools have been slow to gain traction in the marketplace, largely because booking a hotel for a group can be a complex process.

The more high-end the hotel, the more additional services there are to be negotiated, and the most efficient way to negotiate is in a conversation. Anderson said that conversion rates for online tools are much lower than for the voice model.

He said that Tourico’s GBE would probably work well for low-end business. The transparency could drive pricing lower but could increase conversion with less human involvement, which in turn could keep margins the same because it involves less staff time.

“The platform has potential for select-service properties that don’t offer much beyond sleeping rooms,” he said. One example of a market to which this would appeal would be parents booking rooms for a swim team or soccer team, he said.

Agents can review quotes as they come in and book the hotel they want on the website by putting 10% down on a credit card. They can then start a rooming list. At that point, a member of Tourico’s group department will contact the agents to continue the planning process. Agents can seek assistance earlier in the booking process if they wish.

Ofir Cohen, executive vice president of global activities and groups for Tourico, said that agents who prefer to book in the traditional way, by emailing a request to Tourico and getting quotes that way, can continue to do so. He said that 35,000 hotels are participating in the GBE; Tourico has 50,000 hotels in its inventory.

Agents can also add on extras such as group transfers, activities and attractions. The GBE is for groups of up to 100 rooms, Cohen said. He added that when the site went live earlier last week, Tourico got 30 requests for bids in less than 24 hours, all for leisure groups. Cohen called that a good response, since the company has done little marketing.