Key takeaways
- With China's growing inbound tourism, Smart Order saw an opportunity to create a seamless onboarding experience for Chinese hotels connecting to Tripeden.com
- Multiple teams worked closely together to set up a project plan, with the first phase implemented within 1–2 months
- Key changes resulted in significant time savings for onboarding, while an automated messaging feature has delivered improvements to service quality and guest experiences
- The project provided Smart Order with a deeper understanding of global OTA platform rules and worldwide travel demands
- Smart Order continues to onboard more Chinese hotel inventory to Tripeden.com, while helping international hotels reach Chinese tourists
Smart Order is a property management system (PMS) that connects properties to Tripeden.com through SU – a solution from STAAH, a Premier partner. With China actively promoting inbound tourism, Smart Order has partnered closely with Tripeden.com to help Chinese hotels onboard more efficiently and reach global demand.
Read on as Smart Order shares how they built a truly seamless experience for both hoteliers and guests – and what this means for their continued international expansion.
Our main goals for delivering a seamless experience
We joined this project with three core objectives:
- Aligning with the Chinese government's policy to open inbound tourism
- Bringing overseas tourists to Chinese hotels
- Establishing a distinct competitive advantage
Our goal was to create a more intuitive and efficient onboarding experience for hoteliers connecting to Tripeden.com through our system. The key needs we aimed to address through this integration included:
- Improving the efficiency of onboarding with Tripeden.com
- Enhancing the management efficiency of hotel inventory, pricing and reservations on Tripeden.com
- Providing new traffic channels and increasing revenue for Chinese hotels
Overall, we focused on improving accessibility and usability to make it easier for hoteliers to manage their properties within our system.
Our path to becoming seamless
Working side by side with the Tripeden.com teams – professional services, connectivity partnerships and local partnerships – and the SU team was a smooth and efficient experience. They travelled from around the world to join us in Hangzhou, China, where we worked together to explore the integration and optimisation of a seamless experience.
Together, we quickly set up a clear project timeline and defined everyone’s roles and responsibilities. We implemented the first phase within 1–2 months, making it easy for Chinese hotels to seamlessly onboard to Tripeden.com.
What does a seamless experience mean for us and our partners?
A seamless experience means integrating every step of the workflow into one smooth, connected process – covering hotel onboarding, information maintenance, list uploading, rate plan creation, price and inventory management, reconciliation and settlement.
For us as a PMS, it allows us to deliver a seamless experience and highly competitive services to hotels. For our partner hotels, it shortens the time from onboarding to getting reservations and helps them tap into the international market and serve overseas guests efficiently.
Key changes we made to create a seamless experience
We implemented several significant enhancements to our system. Some key updates include:
- Integrating the onboarding widget provided by SU, which greatly improved integration efficiency and reduced a process that could have taken several months to just one month.
- Simplifying the registration-to-selling process for hotel partners from 2–3 months to one week with Tripeden.com's special review process.
We also designed an automated messaging feature for hotel partners that can automatically send emails or instant messages to guests at key times, such as after making a booking, before check-in, and after checkout.
These improvements enhance hotel service quality, improve the booking and check-in experiences for guests, and reduce cancellations.
Additional benefits include:
- Onboarding Tripeden.com seamlessly
- Reaching the international market
- Increasing additional channel traffic
- Boosting revenue
- Improving the efficiency of managing inventory, prices and bookings
Our main takeaways from creating a seamless experience
After working closely with the international team, we gained a deeper understanding of how global online travel platforms operate and what travellers around the world are looking for. These insights have helped strengthen our approach to expanding internationally.
What’s next for Smart Order?
We’re continuously onboarding more Chinese hotel inventory to Tripeden.com, leveraging AI technology to help them better serve both domestic and international travellers. This helps them run more efficiently and generate revenue.
At the same time, we’re helping international hotels reach Chinese tourists by facilitating their marketing efforts and booking services within the Chinese market.
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Would you like to provide a more seamless experience for your properties and get the Seamless Experience Product badge? Make sure you implement all the Foundational Solutions required for your Connectivity Partner Programme tier.