SiteMinder unveils Dynamic Commerce Engine to close the ‘execution gap’ in hotel distribution

SiteMinder, the world’s leading hotel commerce platform, has unveiled its Dynamic Commerce Engine to close the ‘execution gap’ in how hotels maximise revenue across all their commercial levers, including pricing and, for the first time, distribution.

Until now, hotels have been limited by technologies that have surfaced only pricing recommendations upon request. SiteMinder’s Dynamic Commerce Engine will go deeper, using machine learning (ML) and AI to surface and execute optimisation recommendations across every commercial lever for a hotel, both at the pricing layer and uniquely at the foundational distribution layer, where underlying issues can significantly limit revenue. These include broken distribution channel connections and unmapped room types, which often go unnoticed and contribute to a multi-billion-dollar opportunity cost for hotels.

The engine will be powered by an unmatched scale of data and distribution capability within the hotel industry. SiteMinder’s platform, used for 20 years by hoteliers, including those at 56,000 individual properties, today powers 2.6 million hotel rooms, 140 million reservations and 300 million room nights every year. Its built-in ML model will leverage these, nearly 4 billion availability, rates and inventory (ARI) signals, to score optimisation opportunities for each property and then surface the most valuable recommendations. Designed as AI-enabled with hoteliers in control, users will then approve every recommended change before the engine executes.

The Dynamic Commerce Engine comes at a pivotal time for hotels, with new SiteMinder research highlighting the need for a hotel’s online presence to stay accurate and consistent. In a survey of more than 12,000 travellers across 14 countries, more than half (51.4%) admitted to abandoning an online hotel booking because of a bad experience. At least one-in-four (26.5%) said it was due to the reviews, photos or details not feeling trustworthy.

“Hotels want to keep up with today’s changing travel landscape, but they don’t have the time or resources to do it and so doing the bare minimum of staying ‘online’ becomes the easiest choice. This is a choice that too many hotels have made for too long, and what it has led to is an intention-action gap – an execution gap. SiteMinder’s Dynamic Commerce Engine is testament that AI has widened the execution gap for hotels, and that AI can also close it with hoteliers staying firmly in control,” says Sankar Narayan, CEO and Managing Director of SiteMinder.

“Reports and AI assistants are no longer enough. Hotels need to know which opportunities actually matter, without having to ask their system, and to be able to convert those opportunities into revenue. This is what we’re making possible. Pricing can’t be the only focus; the same focus is needed for the distribution layer—the foundations—underneath, which has a direct impact on the guest experience. It’s only with an optimised distribution setup that a guest can know if a room is available, at the price they're willing to pay.”

SiteMinder’s Dynamic Commerce Engine will go live over the coming months and hotels can register their interest here.