D-EDGE 2020 Roadmap

• Mass cancellations: Hoteliers can now create rules for mass reservation cancellations, such as whether or not to apply cancellation fees.
• Informing customers of health regulations and cancellation conditions: starting in March, our customers have been able to incorporate personalised messages on their D-EDGE booking engine to inform their customers about the opening/closing of the hotel, about the implementation of health and safety standards, or any other specific message they want to share with their guests.
• Voucher creation: this feature, currently in the pilot phase, automatically creates a voucher following a cancellation, and more generally to generate and manage credits on the D-EDGE extranet.
• Our Hospitality Recovery Tracker was made available to you: To help hoteliers make the right decisions in this difficult and uncertain period, D-EDGE has posted a dynamic barometer online of the main indicators of changes in hotel activity for countries in Europe and Asia Pacific.

Hoteliers need multiple solutions for day-to-day operations: PMSs, CRSs, channel managers, booking engines, RMSs, call centres, CRMs, etc. All these solutions are essential. They should work well together and be easy to use.
We see the value of high levels of integration every day, which is why our goal is to provide our customers with an all-in-one solution.
In January, we launched a hotel CRM offer, and we will continue to develop our range of integrated products to cover every need related to hotel distribution and customer relationship management.
However, we don’t want to put constraints on our customers. D-EDGE customers will always be able to combine D-EDGE solutions with third-party solutions. We already offer connectivity with more than 500 partners, who are global and local stakeholders. We want to remain an open ecosystem that we build on each month so you can work with your chosen solutions.
In addition, D-EDGE is continuing the in-depth integration of its platform with GDS. For hotels that want to grow their corporate clients, GDS is a key sales channel. The “Direct Connect” connectivity with Travelport is already in the final stages. Direct Connect with Amadeus and Sabre is planned for early next year.
This is a major step forward. For the tens of thousands of travel agencies booking hotel rooms on this channel, they will get real-time access to hotel availability and the ability to modify reservations. With the implementation of Direct Connect, the visibility of hotels using our GDS solutions will be greatly improved.

Influenced by the experience of leading e-commerce sites, travellers’ expectations for hotel reservations are changing. The booking process must now be fluid, secure, and fully integrated.
Before the end of the year, we will launch a new concept that fully integrates the booking engine with the hotel website. This means guests will have a seamless, consistent browsing experience when checking hotel information and booking a stay in the hotel’s brand universe.
We will also make Book on Google available to all D-EDGE customers.
Last but not least, we are continuing to develop our classic tools. For example, we’re improving our Smart Booking Engine by adding the Meal Plan functionality. This is currently in the pilot phase and will be deployed more widely in the coming weeks.

Ensuring that travellers’ personal data is managed properly is now an integral part of quality service. Regulations have changed and we have noticed that your guests expect more and more in this area.
The many new obligations resulting from the GDPR – such as the right to be forgotten, and guests’ access to all of their data – can mean long and complicated procedures for the hotel, so we decided to simplify everything.
Starting in September, new features will be available to make hoteliers more autonomous and more responsive in their GDPR-related obligations. This means they can easily configure personal data retention rules and using an extraction feature that is available on the D-EDGE Extranet, they can respond to customer requests for the all their personal data that the hotel has stored.

Because hotels operate 24/7, managers are not necessarily in the office or in front of a computer when an urgent decision needs to be made. This is why we want to deliver the best mobile experience. Our teams have developed the D-EDGE Central Inventory mobile app which enables you to easily perform urgent tasks from your smartphone (iOS and Android) such as managing your inventory and prices, adjusting your rates, etc.
This app is available on the Apple store and Google Play at no additional cost.

More and more hotels are coupling Metasearch campaigns with Search and Display marketing to optimise their performance. And so, it made sense for D-EDGE to extend its MetaGenius platform, a multi-Metasearch campaign management platform, to all campaign types. Very soon we will launch the first platform that offers complete transparency of Digital Media Performance from Search Marketing, Display Re-Targeting and Pre-Targeting, and Metasearch bidding and results. A one-stop-shop for hotels wishing to optimise the ROI of their Digital Media performances. It’s a real revolution.

The millions of transactions processed by D-EDGE provide a unique perspective on hotel distribution trends in most regions of the world. Using advanced statistical analysis methods and Artificial Intelligence algorithms, our teams of engineers, analysts and data scientists work hard to provide hoteliers with increasingly efficient tools in this field. For example:

• To help hotels navigate as best they can, what still remains a very uncertain period, we are sharing our analyses about the recovery of the hotel trade with the Hospitality Recovery Tracker
• Our recent study on the State of Hotel Advertising presents our analysis of how various channels perform and it includes our recommendations for hotels to optimise their sales.
• We are continuing to improve the metrics, reports and dashboards available in D-EDGE solutions.
• We are creating new features to recommend actions to our customers or automate certain manual operations.

Antoine Buhl – Chief Technology Officer