Skift Travel News Blog

Short stories and posts about the daily news happenings around the travel industry.

Business Travel

Sonder Gets a Chain Code in Sabre and Amadeus to Push Move Into Corporate Travel

1 year ago

Sonder has been trying to up its footprint in corporate travel, announced that it now has a chain code, SS, in the Sabre and Amadeus global distribution systems.

Airport with busy business travelers.
Business travelers at an airport. Source: Getty Images

When travel agents are looking to book corporate clients in Sonder properties, having that chain code makes it easier for them to search and find them, Sonder said Wednesday.

Sonder said it obtained the chain code through a partnership with RateGain, which uses a connectivity switch solution to process electronic hotel bookings.

Sonder, a property manager of short-term rentals and hotels, said in its most recent earnings call last month that it had nearly 400 corporate accounts, up from around 250 at the end of March.

Travel Technology

Travel Tech Firm RateGain’s Business Buoyed by Return of Tourists

1 year ago

As more hotels strive to optimize costs, improve return on investment and reduce cost of customer acquisition by generating direct revenue through metasearch platforms, travel technology firm RateGain continues to see considerable demand for its metasearch and digital marketing offerings, Bhanu Chopra, RateGain’s founder and chairman, said.

“We continue to see little or no impact on the overall travel industry as well as our business due to the ongoing increase in inflation, talk about rising interest rates or the ongoing Ukraine conflict,” Chopra said.

Marketing technology has emerged as the biggest vertical for RateGain, with a recurring revenue of 99 percent contributing 41 percent of the company’s overall revenue for the quarter ending June 30, 2022.

Continuing on its path of fiscal prudence, Chopra said RateGain, which made its debut in the stock market in India last year, continues to be one of the very few profitable software-as-a-service companies globally.

“We stay committed to improving profitability through cost optimization and revisiting our commercial agreements to increase revenue per customer,” Chopra said during the earnings call.

The company registered a 59 percent year-on-year revenue growth with revenue from operations reaching $15 million compared to $9 million in the corresponding quarter last year.

“We see robust growth and our annual recurring revenue is now 20 percent higher than pre-Covid levels and is 10 percent higher level compared to the last quarter,” Chopra said.

Given the labor shortages in the travel industry, there has been an acceleration towards digitization and RateGain is well positioned to capture this opportunity, according to Chopra.

“Using artificial intelligence and machine learning we are innovating and launching new products to help our customers acquire guests, retain them and expand on their wallet share,” he said.

Citing Skift Travel Health Index, Chopra said there has been continued improvement in travel demand across the world with more countries now reporting numbers at pre-Covid levels or higher.

Given the return of travel, the company’s transactional volume is up by close to 40 percent. The bundling of data-as-a-service products with marketing technology businesses has resonated very well for the company.

The data-as-a-service business unit grew on the pack of strong volumes of its online travel agency and airline products driven by existing Tier 1 accounts and new accounts, Chopra said. “Also, we entered adjacent sub-verticals within travel such as destination management companies and vacation rental companies and signed up for a set of customers.”

RateGain has also said that it would be investing in launching new products and test piloting them this quarter.

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