Hotelbeds bets on customer-centricity as key to success in the new world of travel
As the Phocuswright Conference gets underway this week in the US, Hotelbeds has revealed how it used the COVID-enforced downtime to focus on customer services innovations and improvements in the region to help partners through the tough days and to prepare for recovery.
Speaking on the first day of the Conference, where Hotelbeds is also sponsoring the Young Leaders Summit, Hotelbeds’ Commercial Director Americas, Lauren Atlass, said: “We truly understand that one of the key success factors in this new world of travel is to be whole-heartedly customer-centric and so, during the COVID-enforced downtime in travel, we took advantage of the capacity we had and turned our focus to how we could best get ready, and help our partners, to get ready for recovery as well as to manage the many challenges the pandemic threw at us.
“We invested in our platforms and developed a range of innovative tools that now form part of our self-service suite, SelfSet, and which are designed to give our clients really efficient ways of managing their own bookings.”
Aligned to this customer-centric approach, Hotelbeds has also increased its customer service workforce in North America by 73% – a move which has resulted in some impressive improvements in their service ratios by improving its call attendance in the region resulting in 90% of calls are now answered in less than 30 seconds.
Lauren Atlass added: “At Hotelbeds we leverage the value of technology to improve our service and product offerings to our customers and partners. Our priority is to save our clients time and money, allowing them to spend more time on the phone selling instead of managing their bookings, recognising the huge importance of this for our partners as they seek to rebound from one of the most challenging periods in the history of our industry. We know that efficiency is king which is why we have taken advantage of the ‘down-time’ forced on us by the pandemic to develop and focus in tech-enabled service offerings.”
Regarding Hotelbeds’ sponsorship of the Young Leaders’ Summit as part of the conference, Lauren said: “Identifying high performers, encouraging them, giving them the space to grow and to develop is a cornerstone of our employee strategy at Hotelbeds, and it’s one of the reasons we jumped at the chance to sponsor the Summit. In fact, the average age of our employees is around 35 years of age so for us, it’s a great platform to not only celebrate our own young leaders but also to show our encouragement and support for all the rising stars of our great industry.”
Also attending the event will be Cesar Concepción, Hotelbeds’ Corporate Development Director as well as Hotelbeds’ Senior Manager Accommodation Partnerships, Eleonora Penna, who has been nominated to represent Hotelbeds at Phocuswright’s Young Leaders’ Summit.
