Conferma releases results of Customer Survey

Conferma has published the results of its recent customer survey.

The survey was distributed via email to all travel agents on Conferma’s emergency contact list. The survey was completed by 70 customers.

Following the previous customer survey conducted in March 2011, Conferma set out to gauge customer perception with the performance of the Support service and the online booking tool, Hotel Booker.

Customer perception of Conferma Support was extremely positive, with satisfaction ratings exceeding 95% for availability, resolutions and knowledge. This compared favourably with results from the previous survey, with the number of negative responses reduced in each category. In the remaining category, 94% of respondents indicated that the response time of Support either met or exceeded expectations. Indeed, Support was widely praised, with several positive comments, such as: “Always available when help is needed” and “Always have a quick reply.”

As ever, the aim of a customer survey is to identify any areas for improvement. Negative responses for availability could be attributed to customers contacting Conferma outside of office hours. Conferma is currently dedicated to providing a support service to handle and enquiries from Monday to Friday 8.30am – 6.00pm, excluding public holidays. Service Management are currently investigating the possibility of extending Support’s hours of availability.

Some comments suggested that the communication of resolutions could be improved. Service Management is contemplating implementing a more sophisticated method of recording all internal communications to ensure that communication between Support and Development is monitored regularly and thoroughly.

Finally, some respondents indicated that they had never contacted Conferma Support or were unaware of the email address. Contact details are prominently displayed on www.conferma.com and are present on all promotional literature. However, to raise further awareness, Conferma is currently making a concerted effort to disseminate contact details for Support as widely as possible. Conferma Support can be contacted by email at support@conferma.com or by telephone on +44 (0)844 815 3601.

The results of the survey also reflected extremely favourably upon Hotel Booker. The layout, user-experience and responsiveness were widely lauded, achieving 100% satisfaction ratings, whilst customer satisfaction with the ease of use and reliability exceeded 96%. Praise for Hotel Booker’s layout and user experience was particularly welcome, as it justified the measures taken by the Development Team to improve the booking tool’s performance over the previous 12 months. Positive comments included: “I think Hotel Booker is an excellent tool, very easy to use and straightforward.”

The 100% satisfaction rating for responsiveness was also particularly pleasing as Development has invested significant time and resources implementing the latest .net technology and introduced considerable performance enhancing software, ensuring the infrastructure supporting the v4.3 solution is the best available in the industry. Investment in innovation and the latest technology reflect Conferma’s commitment to provide leading solutions for our technology. This superb feedback unequivocally indicates that this investment was completely justified.

With regard to respondents’ suggested improvements, nearly half of all suggestions called for more search criteria in Hotel Booker. Conferma is looking into incorporating searches according to hotel facilities, landmarks and GDS reference codes into future releases of Hotel Booker. However, these data issues would require significant development and would therefore not be available until the latter half of 2012 at the very earliest.

Other suggestions pertained to group bookings, payment restrictions and improving Agency Admin functionality. Conferma aims to introduce some of these changes for the next release of Hotel Booker (v4.4) in mid-February.

The final question of the survey concerned alternative Self-Booking Tools and returned extremely positive feedback for Conferma, with 30% of respondents revealing that they use Hotel Booker exclusively.

Conferma’s next Customer Satisfaction Survey is scheduled for June 2012. Watch this space for further development!

2012: A big year for UK hotels

On behalf of everyone at Conferma, I would like to begin this blog entry by wishing all our customers and partners a very happy, healthy and prosperous New Year.

As Conferma’s booking volumes increase around the world, 2012 will present particular issues, challenges and opportunities for the T&E sector in the UK. With the advent of London 2012 and Her Majesty’s Diamond Jubilee, London is preparing to welcome athletes, visitors, media, sponsors and dignitaries from across the globe. Therefore, as global focus centres not only on the capital, but also other British cities and regions, 2012 will have considerable implications for the T&E sector.

Given the significance, interest and prestige surrounding London 2012 and the Jubilee celebrations, the temptation for TMCs will be to centre their focus on the capital. However with events for both landmark occasions being staged in venues across the country, TMCs will also need to reinforce their coverage in alternate locations. Olympic event hosts outside the capital include Windsor, Weymouth, Portland, Broxbourne, Benfleet, Wembley, Glasgow, Cardiff, Manchester and Newcastle. Moreover, flagship annual events on the British calendar, including the Edinburgh Festival, the British Grand Prix, the Open Championship and the World Travel Market will ensure that the T&E sector cannot afford to take its eye off business as usual amidst the furore of the Games and the Jubilee.

Furthermore, the anticipated influx of international officials and tourists will inevitably result in increased hotel prices. Indeed, rates currently stand at 30% higher than average for June and July. TMCs will be required to demonstrate the capability to process more and larger transactions than ever before. Large visitor numbers and the mayhem that will inevitably ensue, particularly in London, also mean that the importance of forward bookings and planning ahead cannot be overemphasised. This ability to manage large volumes of bookings and transactions will provide agencies the opportunity to demonstrate their value to large corporate companies and become the TMC of choice. Indeed, hoteliers are likely to give priority availability to TMCs with lucrative corporate clients with the highest levels of expenditure, ancillary spend and bookings for meeting space.

This is where TMCs can rely on Conferma’s platform of payment solutions to streamline their business operations. The Conferma Settlement Platform (CSP) offers TMCs an automated solution for the settlement and reconciliation of travel expense that removes manual intervention, reduces processing costs and is PCI-DSS compliant.

Despite high demand for hotel accommodation, hoteliers must guard against hiking their prices too much, so as to avoid the scenarios experienced in Athens (2004) and Vancouver (2010), when extortionate prices deterred visitors and resulted in late availability and unsold rooms. Hotels must also be mindful not to neglect service levels for their all year round business, whilst increasing expenditure to satisfy their increase in new international guests. London hotels in particular still need to cater for demand for annual events such as Royal Ascot, Wimbledon, The Proms, Henley and the Farnborough Airshow, as well as the Paralympic Games in September.

With regard to forward planning, TMCs must strike a fine balance when advising their clients. Advocating early bookings secures availability but at high rates with prohibitive booking conditions. On the other hand, later bookings leave clients vulnerable to a lack of availability, but payment does not have to be made months in advance of the Games. Alternatively, any business-critical staff may need to be accommodated outside of London, for example in Saint Albans, Watford and Reading, due to the impracticalities of commuting or being based in London during the Games.

As hotel availability becomes increasingly sparse, TMCs and corporates alike will have to look harder than usual to locate accommodation throughout the UK during the Games. This search could be made easier by Conferma’s online Self Booking Tool. Hotel Booker offers an inventory of more than 150,000 properties, including direct connections to budget hotel chains Travelodge and Premier Inn, who have both increased their presence in the capital ahead of the Olympics.

Moreover, as prices increase, merely locating accommodation will, in most cases, not suffice. Thanks to Rate Analyser, Conferma’s intelligent hotel price comparison tool, TMCs will be able to offer clients the best value rates available. Rate Analyser also provides TMCs with rate trend data for all hotel bookings and notifies users of any favourable rate changes, allowing time to rebook if appropriate. This could become an increasingly attractive proposition if prices drop to reflect last minute availability in the build-up to London 2012.

2012 holds many challenges in store for the T&E sector. Yet many opportunities also lie in prospect. I would like to conclude this blog by expressing Conferma’s commitment to overcoming these challenges and seizing these opportunities in collaboration with our existing partners, whilst expanding our portfolio to work with new partners.    

    

    

   

Reducing Credit Risk

The eurozone debt crisis. Global recession. Bailout funds. Public sector strikes. Rarely has the economic outlook been so bleak.

Amid the backdrop of a challenging economic and geopolitical environment and the relapse into a second successive recession in as many years, businesses worldwide are becoming increasingly vulnerable to the dangers of credit risk.

Furthermore, with the festive period imminent and the accompanying lull in business, it is inevitable that numerous companies will experience short-term cash flow problems. As a result, payments to suppliers are delayed, who in turn suffer from credit exposure and take longer to pay their own bills. This creates a domino effect that cascades its way throughout supplier and customer networks.

The business travel sector is no different. In fact, credit risk becomes an even greater problem because of the fine margins to which many in the industry work. As recently as last week, Thomas Cook, one of the most iconic British brands in the travel sector, secured a £200m loan to enable it to survive the winter lull in business.

TMCs. OTAs. Hotels. Everyone is vulnerable to credit risk. For instance, hotels typically have to wait 30-60 days to receive payments in traditional billback agreements. Depending on their business model, payments to suppliers are then synchronised accordingly. However, a single default on payments in the supply chain affects everyone.

Therefore, in such challenging economic times, companies that become synonymous with prompt payments become increasingly attractive to do business with. This is where Conferma’s products, based on virtual card technology, offer many benefits for banks, corporates and the business travel community. With the Conferma Settlement Platform (CSP), TMCs can hold the credit on a virtual card account or, better still, have their corporate customers open a virtual card account, thus removing their own credit exposure. Conferma’s automated settlement and reconciliation solutions not only significantly reduce the risk of fraud, but also guarantee immediate payment to the supplier in order to remove any credit exposure.

For TMCs, assigning the credit risk to the corporate customer also opens up further opportunities for your business. Perhaps most importantly, if a client does experience problems, you will only be exposed to the loss of the transaction fee, as opposed to the full amount of the booking. However, you could also charge your transaction fee to the virtual card, ensuring that you receive payments quicker.

As an independent third-party settlement solution, Conferma represents the best option because it currently partners with some of the world’s largest banks. Furthermore, with an extensive network of content providers at our disposal, the Conferma Platform provides a single point of connection to the banking world and the travel community.

In the current economic climate, the Conferma Platform not only guarantees punctual payments to ensure customer satisfaction, but does so securely, efficiently and with reduced processing costs, allowing your business to weather the stormy winter period ahead.

Content is King

Over the past few years we've seen a huge rise in the meta search engines, such as Kayak, SkyScanner, Farecast (now part of Microsoft Bing). These meta search engines crawl the web on your behalf to understand, read and record the information that varied online travel agencies (OTA) are publishing. These services give users the ability to enter search requests and in response receive an abundance of pricing from across the web. In seconds offers from ebookers, Expedia, Opodo and many more are returned. Users simply select the deal that's appealing, click a link and they are instantly transported to the OTA for payment.

Like meta search engines, the business travel community want a single view of inventory at a hotel, across all major booking channels to view the best deal and then book it. For all the power Hoteliers are given for yield and channel management, consumers are trying their best to beat the system for the lowest rate, wherever it is.

In business travel the biggest prize was how many hotels you had in your database, then how many can be booked online and finally how many of those are duplicates... No longer is the case. Content within business travel is about the quality of the product the OTA, GDS, Merchant or Direct Connect is providing. Questions are raised on; how long does it take to book, payment terms, commission, how much back-end resource is required, what key locations are covered for specific suppliers.

Over the past couple of years we have seen growth in the request for consumer OTAs to be included within the Conferma Booking Platform. Many OTAs offer affiliate schemes for agencies to join, with a major benefit of receiving commission from one supplier, the OTA, not through chasing each hotel.

The Conferma Booking Platform connects to all major GDS, multiple Direct Connects, OTAs and Merchants plus support for Offline and Allocation content. Agencies have the power to pick and choose what content they would like made available and hold their own agreements with the Content Providers. The Conferma Booking Platform is built on an architecture that allows us to easily add new content without having to make a single code change to our booking tool (in the majority of cases new providers can be implemented in six weeks).

Trends in the consumer travel sector steer the future of business travel, and at Conferma we’re positioned to react quickly.

Ps. 160'000 unique hotels (130'000 online (and no duplicates))

The importance of choice

The recent news that International Airlines Group (IAG) are in negotiations with Lufthansa to acquire British Midland (BMI) has raised concerns in the aviation community. The acquisition of BMI would see IAG, who already own British Airways and Iberia, increase its share of landing slots at Heathrow, the UK’s busiest airport, rise from 45% to 54%.

The Leicestershire based carrier has reported losses of 154m euros (£133m; $213) for the first nine months of 2011, citing rising fuel costs and social unrest in some of its destinations in North Africa and the Middle East as reasons.

Amid growing concerns that IAG are monopolising Heathrow, Virgin Atlantic, who have tabled a rival bid to acquire the loss-making carrier, have described the prospect of an IAG takeover as "disastrous for consumer choice and competition".

Consumer choice is one of the fundamental aspects that Conferma, expert providers of settlement and reconciliation solutions to the Travel and Expenses (T&E) sector, values greatly. Providing access to multiple GDS and non-GDS content providers, Conferma prides itself on its vast and varied suite of content. Our award-winning Conferma Settlement Platform (CSP) can be seamlessly integrated into all systems, therefore we can partner with any card issuing bank or payments provider.

Conferma, who itself has recently expanded its own portfolio to offer payment solutions for low-cost carriers, is proud of its independence. Furthermore, Conferma’s neutrality endears it to an extensive network of travel and banking partners. This neutrality allows Conferma to maximise the number of potential opportunities in the business travel market and encourages competition amongst its partners.

Only time will tell if IAG's acquisition of BMI will deprive Heathrow of healthy competition and consumer choice.

Building A Platform For Commerce

In the early days of CSP, CSP stood for the Conferma Settlement Plan and our customers had only one card partner and one booking tool (ours) to access. Of course, this was only ever going to be beneficial for some customers and so we took a step change in the way we developed CSP. We began to build version 2, the Conferma Settlement Platform. A Platform that would facilitate the same founding features of CSP but on an open network for any booking or desktop tool to connect to any card issuer they want.

The effort the team has put into the platform over the past few years is demonstrating how our open network is coming together. CSP is being used to pay for more travel via more booking channels, where customers are based in more countries with an ever expanding supplier base.

Today, with an ever expanding CSP network you can;

• Use a booking or desktop tool of your choice (XML integration)
• Use Hotel Booker with over 12 content providers
• Use Conferma Low cost air tool
• Use Conferma WebPay to place cards into any website or desktop system
• Use our Batch Interface for bulk card deployments
• Seamlessly access (and switch between) cards from all of our major card issuing banks
• Settlement is being performed in multiple currencies
• Access powerful data hands offs for your system

At the start of the month we implemented our latest card partner, HSBC. The speed and professionalism of the implementation into a major partner, such as HSBC, shows the strength and capability of the team here at Conferma.

The choice of booking tool and card issuer is up to you, as it should be. Like never before we’re making it easier to be part of the network. Contact us for more information.

New Office

You may have noticed a lack of blog posts in the past couple of months, all I can say is it has been very busy here at Conferma! In the coming weeks we have a number of exciting announcements to make which will give you some insight into what we have been up to.

That said, I would like to announce we have successfully moved office! Whilst our previous offices were certainly different from the normal financial services HQ, we had simply grown too big for them. We have now moved into our very own bright building at Cheadle Royal Business Park, which has plenty of space for growth.

Overall the move was stress free with just a few technical hiccups with internet access from our offices and a rather frustrating incoming call issue, let’s just say you had to get your point made in ten minutes...

The move is a step change for Conferma, with a more corporate feel, but we have kept the fun and quirky environment we are known for. A big hit with the staff is the new break area where the full walls are white boards.

The new offices are a recognition to the staff, customers and partners that together we're doing something right. The new offices mark a point in Conferma's history and the continuation of an exciting journey that I hope you will all join us on.