Imagine, if you will, you’re trying to locate “The Hotel on Main Street” in New York. You do a quick search on Google, but none of your results return an exact match. Here’s what turns up instead:
- The Main Street Hotel
- The New York Hotel on Main
- The Inn on Main Street
- The New York Main Street Hotel
Are any of the above a correct match? Are they all one in the same? Or are they all unique, standalone properties?
That’s the quandary facing hundreds of thousands of suppliers, global distribution systems and third-party booking sites on a daily basis. While the brands might have their own unique identifier codes for every property in their system, the fragmentation of external lists and databases among third parties have resulted in an almost impenetrable web of inconsistencies, duplications and outright errors.
An online travel agency, for example, might code each property in its system using a seven-digit code. A vendor, however, might use a six-digit code with two alphabetic characters. Within an enclosed system, they work. But try plugging them together and … “DOES NOT COMPUTE.”
The issue has plagued the industry for decades, but the pain is intensifying as more systems become interconnected and intertwined online.
Fortunately, several teams are working to sort the mess by developing a standardized labeling process for each and every property on the planet.
In the U.S., those efforts are being led by an alphabet-soup consortium of tech-minded associations: HFTP, HEDNA and HTNG. The effort also has the support of the OpenTravel Alliance, the Convention Industry Council and Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International.
These entities expect to have equal influence over the overall direction of the project, agreeing to establish a governing body to oversee it.
“The approach we’re taking is we need to own it—we need to be able to make the policy decisions, but somebody else may be in a better position on a contract basis to operate it,” Doug Rice, executive VP and CEO of HTNG, told me a few weeks ago.
What’s the end goal?
“The end goal is to make it easier for the various systems, vendor product distributors to talk to each other,” he said.
“There isn’t a system in place where an (OTA) can go to make sure it is getting the up-to-date data for the hotel. There are ways that they can get that indirectly, but they’re very expensive.”
“This gives everybody who needs to identify the hotel a single place where they can go and get authoritative information. From our standpoint, it’s not unlike, ‘Why do we have friendly URLs for Internet addresses? Why doesn’t everyone type in our (exact) IP address?’ The answer is, ‘(URLs are) easier to remember, and if we change our IP address or moved our server around, you’re not dependent on us to tell you we moved our server.’”
Their aim is not unlike that of the Travel Technology Initiative’s TTI Codes, which are already up and running. Participants are skewed heavily European, with a number of tour operators and bed banks in the mix.
The missing link
Despite varying levels of progress thus far, the groups’ efforts are essentially moot—and will remain so—until the hotel companies themselves sign on in support.
But that support has proven hard to come by.
The U.S.-based effort has yet to generate commitments from the major chains because issues of costs and continuity are still up in the air, Rice admitted. Before the likes of Hilton Worldwide, Marriott International and Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide sign on board, the associations must first offer a low-cost solution that involves as little legwork on the part of hoteliers as possible.
One of the big boys isn’t going to spend millions revamping their internal systems simply to recode their portfolios.
The TTI program recognized this hesitancy from the major chains and launched with a supplier-led effort, said Peter Hazel, owner of Premier Hospitality Solutions and a member of TTI’s management committee.
“It was always going to be our strategy that once we had that in place we would then start to share that with the hotel industry,” he told me.
“But actually the point is the horse has already bolted. In this situation, the market dictates. As much as Marriott wants to control it, the big question is what they want to control. We’re only talking about the postal address at this point in time. That was the most important initiative to start with. That’s not to say we don’t have aspirations to expand this to start to include, for example, wider content. But at the moment the wider content is not an issue. It’s not a problem. The problem was in parsing hotel databases.”
While TTI has 223,000 unique codes, the larger chains have yet to commit. The program runs at a cost: Hoteliers can access their TTI Code for €12 ($19) a year. An additional €13 ($21) a year lets them gain access to a full set of tour operator codes in the system.
The U.S.-based effort has yet to code anything. The group plans to have its governing body in place by 2013 with a contract in place for the database operators a few months after.
“A lot of it will depend on whether the database has to actually be built from scratch or whether we can acquire a seed database from the operating partner or a third party,” Rice said.
Likelihood of success?
A system of standardized, unique global identifiers is a “win-win for everybody”—conceptually, at least, said John Burns of Hospitality Technology Consulting who provided initial research for the U.S.-led effort.
Hoteliers, he said, should get on board.
“They need to be compellingly reminded of the problems of their current systems,” Burns told me. “You do run into problems of duplicate codes and take what are in many cases old, old lists or systems and tweak them, not just change the information, but you end up having all kinds of fields and footnotes because the situation has become more complex as you have (ownership) and flag changes. …”
“More compelling is reminding them in dealing with outside agencies for commission payment and other things that there is chaos out there,” he said.
But will the efforts ever come to complete, ripened fruition?
Burns remains optimistic, although admits we’re probably several years away. “It’s going to take a couple of years to put together if we all get serious and focus on it.”
As for this cranky journalist, I’m perhaps a bit more pessimistic. While unique identifiers are warranted and should be welcomed, the big brands will never adopt them unless there’s a seamless way to integrate their existing systems. Given the complexity of the issue at hand—parsing through millions of listings and managing one, constantly evolving list—I find it hard to imagine a no- or low-cost solution is in the works.
But hopefully someone or some organization proves me wrong.
Now on to the usual goodies …
Stat of the week
7.9%: The U.S. unemployment rate for October, which was up only slightly from the 7.8% reading in September, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. This is the final reading of the metric before the presidential election Tuesday.
Quote of the week
“We don’t take it lightly. You prepare for worst-case scenario.”
—Kate Martin, GM of the Hotel Chandler in New York, as reported in “East Coast hoteliers brace for Hurricane Sandy.”
The quote here is not as powerful as what prompted it—Hurricane (now “superstorm”) Sandy, which ravaged the U.S. East Coast this week, destroying homes, grounding tens of thousands of flights and causing serious disruptions and destruction to countless hotels.
Comment of the week
“Just say yes to LATE CHECKOUT requests? IS this someone who has ever worked in front of house? Come on. If you say Yes to everyone you will not have room available for when the new guests arrive and if you hotel has a guaranteed check in time guess what you now owe them compensation. WE say yes as much as we can, sadly we have to say no sometimes and whether or not the guest is happy about it if we explain why they understand. Waiting in queue to check in no problem if the trolls in accounts or another managers are willing to work as receptionist! Guess what 2 receptionist working and 20 people all arrive at the same time it happens-just how do you eliminate the queue. Budgets dictate that you can not be overstaffed, but you can be understaffed.”
—Commenter “front of house” expressing, shall we say, frustration over a suggestion from HotelNewsNow.com columnist Adam Zembruski to help alleviate guests’ frustrations.
If I can step in here, “front of house,” I think you’re arguing one point when Adam was addressing another. He was simply providing a cost-benefit analysis. As he explains: “The cost of annoying a guest outweighed the benefit of getting a guestroom back by 11 a.m. versus 3 p.m. He understood the value of a return guest.” That point stands. It seems like your beef stems from an issue with staffing, which, while related, is another area of concern. Is it fair that you shoulder the burden of budget constraints? Not in the slightest. But that doesn’t mean Adam is wrong either.
Email Patrick Mayock or find him on Twitter.
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