SEATTLE and CHICAGO - August 4, 2019 - Yapta, the innovator of airfare and hotel price tracking services, today announced the release of the managed travel industry's most advanced prescriptive hotel analytics solution, TravelAI Hotel version 2.0. Using advanced analytics and modeling, the solution provides clear line of sight into savings achieved by implementing recommendations across sourcing, rate types and policy improvements. Actionable recommendations are based on near real-time booking data, visibility into POS rate availability data, and pricing data gathered from tracking over half a million bookings a day.

"Customers using version 1.0 of TravelAI for Hotel saw tremendous success, saving anywhere from $300,000 to $1 million by relying on Yapta's proprietary algorithms and extensive network of data," said Valerie Layman, Yapta's Chief Product Officer. "TravelAI 2.0's dashboard makes it easy for travel managers at any level to see the savings impacts of implementing the top recommendations, laying out precisely where and how to address sourcing, rate performance and policy issues without exhaustive effort."

The solution's sourcing recommendations can determine the right mix of suppliers for any corporate travel program - including which suppliers to add, and which low-value suppliers to remove. Significant hard dollar savings can be achieved by adding high-value suppliers into the sourcing mix, while excluding suppliers from a program can also achieve hard dollar savings, as well as soft dollar savings in the form of time.

TravelAI Hotel 2.0 also intelligently prescribes the most beneficial rate types to negotiate, assessing both static and dynamic rates based on rate availability data gathered at the time of booking. Booked rates are benchmarked against Yapta's rich data of over 8,500 customers, against the Best Available Rate (BAR), and against contracted rates - clearly identifying the areas to improve rate performance and when to utilize dynamic rates versus static rates. The ongoing measurement of rates provides the confidence that value is being delivered post-negotiations and that issues can be addressed immediately.

Lastly, the solution's policy recommendations outline the savings associated with implementing policies and enforcing those policies. Yapta's access to all available rates at the time of booking brings visibility to travelers that book upgraded rooms, when standard rooms are available. It also recognizes when travelers may not be booking contracted rates when they are available. These policy improvements alone have proven to drive significant savings for managed travel programs.

"Combining RoomIQ's dynamic price tracking with the analytical abilities of TravelAI Hotel has enhanced our ability to drive savings throughout the travel life cycle - from negotiations to booking and travel," said Jeff Daily, Director of Global Travel for Sanmina. "Through the solution's unbiased and actionable data and deep analytics, we're able to capture accurate and compelling guidance on changes to our travel program."

Early usage by Yapta customers has shown that TravelAI Hotel version 2.0 can deliver an additional three to five percent in savings for travel programs of all sizes. Combined with hotel savings of up to four percent from using RoomIQ, Yapta's hotel price tracking solution, companies can dramatically reduce their hotel spend with no traveler disruption.

Yapta is the only supplier to provide dynamic price tracking for both air and hotel bookings, in addition to prescriptive analytics. Yapta's next prescriptive analytics solution, TravelAI Air, is in early adopter phase with plans for full market launch in November of this year. TravelAI Air will provide prescriptive recommendations on the airlines and routes to negotiate during RFP procedures, offer insight on the competitiveness of fares against benchmarks, and make effective policy recommendations. For more information on Yapta and its cutting-edge price assurance and analytics technology, visit Yapta.com.