Travelport Integrates Small-Group Booking Tool Into Commerce Platform
by Michele McDonald /
Travelport has integrated Groupize’s mobile and cloud-based hotel booking tools for small group meetings into its Travel Commerce Platform.
The integration will provide travel agencies with access to a dedicated groups and meetings portal, preferred hotels, negotiated rates, competing bids, approval tracking, a communication engine and online bookings with PNRs.
Travelport said the solution enables the easy integration of group bookings into the agency workflow, providing new revenue opportunities with minimal hassle.
The Groupize solution, first introduced in 2011 by Charles de Gaspe Beaubien, a veteran of Yankee Holidays, Globus and other group travel companies, is designed to accommodate groups of fewer than 50 participants who require fewer than 25 hotel rooms.
It also is designed to bring small groups and meetings under the umbrella of a corporate travel program; up to 80% of small groups bypass managed travel programs, according to de Gaspe Beaubien, so companies lack visibility into their costs.
Groupize’s tool can be custom-branded as a travel agency solution or as a self-booking tool for a corporation.
Travelport said its addition to the Travel Commerce Platform will further strengthen its standing in the mobile commerce arena, which it has targeted for the last year. Its acquisition of Mobile Travel Technologies in July 2015 spearheaded that effort.