SiteMinder has partnered with HotelSwaps, a room exchange program for independently owned and operated boutique and luxury hotels. Under the partnership, hotels that use SiteMinder and meet HotelSwaps’ membership criteria can trade their unsold rooms with other hotels using HotelCoins, HotelSwaps’ proprietary reservation system and digital currency.
The partnership is an opportunity for hotels to create an alternative value from otherwise unused rooms. By sharing those rooms with the global hotel community, hotels can increase their ancillary revenues during periods of lower occupancy, save on their business travel expenses and offer attractive incentive programs to their executive staff.
“Hoteliers are doing a great job in optimizing yields and maximizing utilization of their valuable hotel assets, but still billions of roomnights stand empty every year in wonderful hotels around the world,” HotelSwaps co-founder/CEO Preben Vestdam said in a statement. “HotelSwaps’ technology and HotelCoins currency allow hoteliers to share such unused capacity within the community of hotel professionals for their mutual benefit.”
“With this new capability, independent boutique and luxury hotels are empowered to tap into a new, unique driver of occupancy and revenue, and share their perishable assets with like-minded hoteliers to benefit the industry as a whole,” said James Bishop, senior director global demand partnerships at SiteMinder.
HotelSwaps member hotels can use SiteMinder to maintain their live inventory within the HotelSwaps reservation system and receive reservations in parallel with their other distribution channels. Hotel customers of SiteMinder can connect to HotelSwaps through SiteMinder’s platform, as with any of the 400 other distribution channels that are available within the company’s open ecosystem.