Urgent: Hrs suspended
Dear Customers,
the collaboration between WuBook and Hrs is seriously compromised. It is very possible that from October the 8th on, HRS will no longer allow the channel manager to connect the portal, at least partially.
When did we receive this information? Just Friday the 3rd of October, at 17:45. We did many efforts to update you as soon as possible, due to the reduced time. Now it is 11 a.m. and we are finishing the work of writing and translation of texts.
Anyway, the collaboration is probably not going to continue. It is just a matter of time and responsibility: at this moment we do not want to have any further relation with the German OTA. The refusal is complete, because our personal thresholds have been exceeded.
But, what happened?
We have been required to accept partnership conditions that are, for our policy, our vision and sensibility, unacceptable. I’d like to tell much more, but for simple reason I have to be concise. As we refuse HRS conditions, we requested to close the actual partnership friendly. In particular, we have requested to end the collaboration on the first January 2015.
This way, in fact, you would have time to organize yourself avoiding any risk. Let’s see the way they behave and if they accept the proposal. We have faith on common sense.
Before operational suggestions, let me open a little window. It is true that we are living a strange season: few days ago we have announced the suspension of AirBnB. But things are radically different. We never had an official collaboration with AirBnB, nor unofficial. The connection was in screenscraping (for those interested, we are still working on a possible collaboration of this OTA and it seems we are opening possibilities hopefully!!). In fact, the connectivity was for free.
With Hrs, instead, the connectivity is (or better was) official. And the case is really unique.
We have very realiable and firm relations with all the OTAs we are connecting to. In particular, not to brag, but we are Preferred Vendor for Booking.com and Expedia. We mantain affable relations with the staff of all the OTAs. And we always have had this kind of good relations of mutual consideration and respect. You know us and we are WuBook also with them.
From our side there has not been negligence ever during the collaboration with OTAs. But maybe there is an exception: we have been negligent to not realize before that some relations are more risky than others. We should have realized it first.
So, what to do now? In case of an immediate suspension of the connectivity, we can start from this point: old payments for connection to HRS will be refound the way you prefer (refunding money, give credits to other services or other channels connectivity, etc.). Give us just few days cause the situation is – basically it is- confusing and unusual for us.
We can’t do anything form the operational point of view, a part from giving suggestions. In a few days you possibly should have to manage contingents in HRS manually. So, what to do in the case of a services suspension and you want to maintain active this OTA? Well, remaining availability must be mantained manually not to create overbookings. Then, should you receive any overbooking, please keep it tracked. It could become an important detail.
But always, it would be better to contact your account manager to agree, depending on your preferences, the best solutions. Remember that the channel manager offers many tools and functionalities till it would be active: use it cleverly.
Finally, I’d like to offer my thoughts on OTAs and channel managers. OTAs live thanks to your work of daily updating prices and availabilities. A work that takes hours of your day and without which they won’t have datas to show, rooms to sell. A part from being partners and paying customers, you also are keyboard workmans. The possibility to manage those datas with a software helps you a lot on your daily task. And I consider a right the fact of allowing you to use the software you (not they) choose as confident provider.
To deny this right without any working reason or to agree only to oneself interests, or to stop collaborations from one side without looking for any agreement with the other part…well, these policies owns precise names. How do you call this actions?
Let me also say: “Sorry if I seem sharp on this post or in the forum.” Not only. I kindly ask you to be aware of your eventual commentaries. We have never cut nor cancelled any commentary so far. But the situation is (understand us!) a bit tense. In partwe are always, to be as transparent as possible, publishing all to tell you with the maximum of frankness. All our positions are public.
We are very afraid about this situation. Sincerely.
