Hotels Switch to Next-Gen Tech to Sell Rooms Via Online Partners
Photo Credit: The nhow hotel in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, is part of NH Hotels. Some NH Hotels are participating in Impala's new connectivity tech. NH Hotels
Skift Take
It's taken years for hotels to adopt an array of new technologies and business practices to improve selling travel online. The metaphor is like shaking a bottle of ketchup. Little appears until a lot suddenly comes out. Similarly, hotel digital innovation may come rapidly after a long wait.
Integrating travel agencies and other resellers into hotel tech systems is traditionally time-consuming and costly. Several upstart tech companies say they've found a better way. Resellers of all sizes, including global online travel agency brands, are paying attention to the tech trend.
Exhibit A is Impala, a London startup that on Wednesday launched a software hub that's designed to more quickly integrate hotel systems with companies that resell travel (think regionally popular online travel agencies like Despegar or flash sale sites like Voyage Privé) — or that want to resell travel (think companies like Amazon, which already sells flights in India).
Impala is one of a few efforts to use next-generation technologies to simplify how hotels distribute their rooms. What all these efforts have in common is that they're taking advantage of several long-term trends that have only recently matured and been adopted by a critical mass of hotels.
For simplicity's sake, we'll focus
