NowBoarding Launches Global Travel Marketplace with Real-Time Personalized Offers for Travelers and Suppliers
NEW YORK, July 10, 2024 /JamNewsWire/ — The ineluctable middlemen have long been the problem with the travel industry – too many layers and mouths to feed between suppliers and travelers. Some $75B a year in hotel commissions and short term rental booking fees are paid to the largest online travel retailers Airbnb, Expedia and Booking.com that inflate prices for consumers diminishing discretionary spending on travel. Adding to the problem is the strife between retailers and hosts with different motivations for implementation of rules, communication and ownership of the traveler pushing suppliers to look for alternatives.
That is until today – goodbye having to go to individual websites and assorted online travel agents to get the best deal. NowBoarding enables suppliers to efficiently reach their ideal customer base, commission free, selling directly from their proprietary inventory systems within the nowboarding.ai marketplace once and for all. NowBoarding has changed the business model in travel, introducing a freemium subscription that allows the platform to be completely market neutral and void of pesky sponsored ads that are expensive to suppliers and oftentimes not relevant for users. Subscriptions are free for suppliers with less than three listings, generally smaller short term rental hosts that require no integrations all the way to enterprise hotels that pay $5,000 annually per property including all integrations and payment facilitation.
Chris Moss, CEO of NowBoarding, explains, “Our mission is to be the most meaningfully connected travel marketplace in the world. NowBoarding leverages machine learning to perfectly match supply with demand by allowing the suppliers, in real time, when consented by the traveler, to understand user intent and propensity to buy, automatically distributing personalized offers to a desired traveler for suppliers.”
“The travel market is keen on marketing personalization but low on delivery – the omnichannel ecosystem is at war with itself. Supplier websites deliver an incomplete and fragmented planning and search experience, while the OTAs’ model is obstructive, rigid and costly.” As Moss further explains, “Every supplier globally wants to reduce costs and increase sales. We can save hoteliers up to 99% on cost of sale and distribution while delivering the holy grail – consented real time search data to help them increase customer connection, loyalty and sales.”
Two Disruptive Features are the Focus of Launch
First, Price Match Fusion enables travelers who have booked a hotel at any of the large online travel agencies to price match it at nowboarding.ai. Once the traveler completes the Price Match Fusion wizard, the hotelier the traveler has booked with will be notified directly so it can create a personalized offer directly from its system, bypassing the commissions and repurposing that money toward the client. This takes advantage of the fact that 60% of hotel bookings are cancellable up to 48 hours prior to check-in.
Secondly, NowBoarding’s Whisk Me Away feature empowers users to list a desired destination. Once they set a radius on the map of where they want to go, select dates and number of travel companions, users will have created a brand new trip in which suppliers will fight to win their business. Using NowBoarding’s Search Hawk functionality, suppliers will readily see these leads and be able to respond automatically with relevant, personalized offers.
The platform is now live with over 180,000 listings globally and growing rapidly. It offers short term rentals without the 12.5% average service fees of Airbnb, as well as hotels ranging from smaller independents to the biggest brands in the world. The company will move quickly to add a proprietary chat system, groups to help suppliers further micro segment and multiple categories with the aim to have 16 by the end of 2025.
For more information on partnering with NowBoarding, please reach out to press@nowboarding.ai.
SOURCE NowBoarding Holdings, Inc.