Where your business counts
Frequently Asked Questions

This is just a “Merchant Model?for groups, why is it any different?
  • Hotels have control over inventory and pricing under our model with the ability to restrict length of stay and deposit policy.
  • Produces a much higher yield than the merchant model.
  • Produces greater economic benefits to the hotel and planners due to the transaction model versus percentage mark up.
  • This is a new service for third party suppliers/planners and meeting planners. They will be able to offer added value to their attendees of a lower internet rate.
  • Provide the meeting planner with more data than ever before allowing you to know where your attendees are staying, at what rate by hotel by meeting.

What is a “merchant model?
  • The merchant model is essentially a third party internet wholesaler that realizes revenue on the mark up of rates.
  • e-HotelRates.com works on transaction fee.

How does this work if the planner signs up but the hotel is not participating?
  • By using the group portal, their attendee can be tracked on the internet
  • We will work with you to get the hotel to sign on

How does this work if the hotel signs up but the planner isn't using it?
  • The advantage for the hotels to sign up is based on their ability to manage multiple inventories and create better yields
  • The XML software allows reservations to tie into the hotel’s existing reservation system thus reducing man power.

How can I work this with my current housing company?
  • A housing company can use us as an affiliate to provide global internet reservation traffic.
  • We will work with them to integrate an existing call center.

How does it really track where people are staying?
  • Our robust SQL servers and application allow us to interface our database with the back ends data of global partners. It also enable organizations to easily store, manage, and analyze data through interoperability advancements, support for open standards, and native Extensible Markup Language (XML) and Web services capabilities. In a highly dynamic and fluid environment, it merges all relevant information needed to track your attendees.

When it goes out to the net, how do I know if it is pulling off of every internet wholesaler site?
  • We identified those sites that historically and consistently provide the lowest rates. We have affiliated ourselves with those organizations in order to search for the best rates available. 97.6% of the time, it is the lowest rate.

Why would I want to let my attendees go out on the net to compare rates? Isn't that pushing people outside of the block?
  • We are addressing the fact that they are already booking outside the block. We are not trying to change behavior, but address the current behavior patterns while tracking and providing better information that is presently not available.
    • Gives you price sensitivity for your groups
    • Gives you information about your group to setup more appropriate blocks and pricing for future meetings

What is to prevent the hotel from undercutting my group rate if they are not seeing their property pickup?
  • The hotel may decide to allocate a portion of your block to restricted internet rates, which in turn would mitigate any attrition issues that may confront you. Of course, this should be discussed, between the meeting planner and hotel, and approved before any changes are finalized or posted.

What if I don't use a housing company. How will that work for me?
  • By not incurring additional costs for a housing company, you will be able to negotiate lower hotel rates for your attendee.
  • Access to real-time reports 24/7, easy to manage, and the ability to communicate with your attendees and hotel electronically.

There are other housing companies that claim they can track where your attendees are going. How does it compare to their product since they claim that they can do the same thing.
  • They are searching the global distribution system; such as Sabre, Amadeus, Worldspan and Apollo which is not a net rate distribution system. Contrary to these GDS systems, we deal on a net rate environment.

Who owns e-HotelRates.com and what kind of funding do you have behind you? I want to ensure that if I sign up with you, you don't fall by the wayside like other .com's
  • e-HotelRates.com is a privately held corporation and is made up of international investors as well as domestic partners. The technology and infrastructure are supported by our Canadian development partners with over 20 years of proven experience. They are a major provider to the Canadian government for a variety of development contracts and applications.
  • The idea resulted from a debate at an annual PCMA meeting on housing attrition and booking around the block. Several Industry leaders with other various meeting planners and hoteliers brainstormed to a find a solution. In order to avoid conflict of interest, e-HotelRates.com has taken on outside investors to facilitate further development of this technology. We view this as an industry solution. Although several hotel chains are involved in e-HotelRates.com, no hotel chain or any of its employees owns an interest.
  • We have 12 month contracts with each hotel that has signed on.

Does Hyatt own this?
  • No, and no other Chain has any financial interest.

How does the pricing model really make it cheaper for the hotels and why is it really better than the “merchant model?
  • e-HotelRates.com is a transaction based model versus percentage mark-up.

Why would this be good for PCMA to be involved? IAEM, MPI?
  • Their membership has clearly stated that “booking around the block?is the number one problem in the industry today along with attrition. The system places information into the hands of those planners as well as control of inventory back to the hotels. While it doesn’t solve the attrition issue, it does allow planners and hotels to reach better business agreements through better information.

Why would a bureau need to be involved if all of the hotels are already using it?
  • The bureau is a conduit between its member hotels and their customer, the planner. It helps the hotels to market to more customers while providing the bureau with functional reports both at a global level for the city as well as by event so tracking performance is real time. It also supports their efforts with the leisure market and provides value through links to their other member organizations such as restaurants, event tickets and golf. Finally, it is a revenue stream which is so important for bureaus and their operation

I'm a bureau with my own housing group and we make money on our housing services. How is this going to impact the revenue streams I am already accustom to?
  • The bureau will sign on as an affiliate, and the bureau will receive a return for each reservation

I'm a bureau, what are the real advantages for me? So what if I don't get involved, should I really care?
  • Your competitors will have a distinct advantage of providing a comprehensive marketing, reservation and housing service and more importantly, a stronger involvement in the relationship with the customer.

I see the Chamber of Commerce on the site. Why would they want to be involved?
  • Two reasons: 1. in a majority of the cities in this country, the Chamber of Commerce is the bureau; 2. the Chamber of Commerce represents the business community of whose members are hotels, corporations as well as other local organizations.

I add additional fees to my hotel rate; such as shuttle, registration. How does this work?
  • That is between you and the hotel.
  • You will now receive a 100% pass-through on any fees you build on to your rate.