Top line issues

According to Peter Dennis, these are tips of very big icebergs that the apartment industry has to wake up to. "These should be top line issues for serviced apartment providers, if they want to play in the GDS and onward distribution corporate environment. The industry needs to understand that a corporate is employing a TMC to manage all their travel. They will expect the TMC to book all these apartments for them, but the charges for the double work will be passed on to the corporate."

"More and more corporates are looking to their booking agencies to take a holistic view at the word 'accommodation,' not just the word 'hotel.' This covers hotels, B&Bs, inns, corporate housing, serviced apartments and so forth. The leading hotel booking agents have developed their own bespoke systems over the years to accommodate their sector."

"They're not so heavily reliant on GDS. They have their own 'direct connect' technology. For example, at BSI we can pull up Premier Travel Inn availability alongside that of Marriott on the same screen. We don't have to deal with different systems. But it's a big investment, and only the bigger companies have done it to the level needed."

"In the hotel industry there are many property management systems (PMS's), such as Fidelio, but there are at least some standards in terms of PMS integration to Central Reservation Systems (CRS). In the serviced office and apartment world there's a whole host of PMS-type providers, ranging from 'home-built' systems to unique, bespoke systems like Regus's Excalibur. They developed their own application protocol and built their own schematic for technical people to say, 'If you want to integrate with me, here is my application protocol.' That protocol may or may not follow certain travel industry standards."

"Where are the smaller apartment providers in terms of developing their own PMS? This opens up a minefield, if they're going to work in a way that is convenient to the TMC. One has to look at the size and diversity of the market. Corporates don't want to pay for extra work."

Extended stay & relocation bookings

Dennis admits that there are difficulties in making apartments fit the e-commerce model. "Take Marriott's extended stay product, Residence Inn, which is essentially a mini-flat. If somebody books for 20 days, the pricing model for Residence Inn is that you pay less per day the longer you book. So you now have a reservation number for those 20 days. Prior to the customer turning up, they decide they now only need ten days. There's now a higher price to pay. You are complicating the whole e-commerce thread in terms of pricing and rules and all the programming that will need to go around that.

"The golden rule about e-commerce and onward distribution is that it's very easy to make a booking, very easy to do a cancellation, but very difficult do what's called a 'true interactive modify.' If I'm a hotel, I don't want the system to do a cancel and then a rebook, because in the split second I do the cancellation prior to re-book, demand might be so heavy that the original availability and booking I had could disappear. So I've lost everything. That is a huge technical requirement for anyone who holds inventory. There's a big modify issue around extended stay."

Apartments in an RFP

More and more, large corporates who have to source a lot of hotels are using third party RFP systems, such as Lanyon, Uversa or Lodging Logistics. Again, those applications have been developed in the main for the hotel industry and follow standards like rate codes and meeting room codes previously mentioned. Have their products been developed to accommodate the needs of apartments? The answer is probably not to date. The fit is not as close as it should be, and work will need to be done to correct that moving forward.