UK-based online hotel booking company emerges as leader in inexpensive accommodation market

Results at a glance

Business Operations

Improved due to implementation of 24/7 Service

Improved Flexibility

Ability to ramp up support by as much as 70% in anticipation of seasonal business

Core Activities

The client's focus following TransForm’s assumption of back-end responsibilities

The opportunity was big and so was the challenge to deliver a seamless hotel booking experience!

Background

Finding the right hotel accommodation in terms of affordability and quality is a requirement for every traveler. Since price is a big factor travelers consider, for online hotel stay booking businesses, it becomes a challenge to pin the right rate for not one but every online hotel deal listed on the site. This was exactly what our customer, an online provider of inexpensive accommodation for UK travelers, was facing in 2007. The opportunity was big and so was the challenge to deliver a seamless hotel booking experience; and the prize: a big foothold in the industry which was poised for exponential growth.

Challenges

Hotel booking at the click of a button has become the norm for travelers. In line with the growing demand, our customer’s database of hotels was also expanding and creating newer challenges every day including: Back-end changes to hotel information, including pricing and inventory, had to be synchronized with the front-end display of rates and availability

Solutions

TransForm set out to find ways to help streamline hotel inventory management and ensure sustainable, long-term value creation. The TransForm team analyzed the entire business process and charted out various possibilities for bringing in more efficiencies including:

Handling the inventory management process so our customer could focus on its core competencies
Offering remote support with one dedicated member assessing the scale and pace of our customer’s expansion
Expanding the team within a few months to 6 members handling the entire back office process
Implementing a selection procedure for adding new properties which ensured the addition of quality inventory and rejection of sub-par properties at the initial stage
Designing a quality check system for existing properties, that from time to time performs a check run, grades properties on a predetermined scale and updates the grades on the website

Results

TransForm’s support began to translate into visible and sustained benefits for our customer as follows:

50% decrease in operational costs by avoiding setup costs related to backend work
Increased customer acquisition due to
Seamless backend operations managed by the TransForm team
Improved front-end experience as the customer’s resources were now available to better manage the front-end
Enhanced market credibility by consistently offering the most accurate hotel information and lowest rates on the website
Established 24/7 service creating better operational business continuity
Ability to quickly ramp up to handle seasonal volumes with some seasons requiring increased support by up to 70%

TransForm’s continued support ensures that this UK-based player continues to strengthen its market position against other industry participants. Today, it has emerged as the world’s biggest source of inexpensive accommodation for UK travelers and has been featured in “Money Savings Expert” and a Channel 5 feature, “It Pays to Save”.

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