Corporate Traveler Sweetens Melon with Hotel Booking Tool

Travel management company Corporate Traveler has implemented a new hotel booking tool within its Melon travel booking and management platform in the U.S. and Canada, the company announced.

The tool is built from Corporate Traveler parent company Flight Centre Travel Group’s partnership with aggregator technology specialist HotelHub, which aggregates hotel content across multiple global distribution systems as well as non-GDS channels into a single desktop interface, standardizing rates and room types across channels to avoid duplication. Corporate Traveler said all its hotel content sources in the United States and Canada, as well as any negotiated rates by its clients, have been integrated into Melon via HotelHub. Melon also has deployed HotelHub’s API, so clients can connect the content to their own preferred booking tool.

Corporate Traveler has enabled billback payment modes in the hotel booking platform, enabling use of such payment options as virtual cards, according to the TMC.

“Feedback from Corporate Traveler consultants using the tech has been extremely positive, and they have been impressed with the ease of navigation, speed in making bookings and integration of virtual payments within the solution,” HotelHub chief commercial officer Eric Meierhans said in a statement. “They are also enthusiastic about functionality such as the ‘book again’ feature, maps showing hotels and rates, choice of search criteria, and booking record standardization.”

Corporate Traveler, Flight Centre’s division specializing in small and midsized customers, now is working to implement the hotel booking tool and API connection in the U.K., which it projects will be done within the next few months. South Africa will follow in the fourth quarter of this year.

Corporate Traveler launched the Melon platform a little less than a year ago.

Michael B. Baker www.businesstravelnews.com