• The II Dingus&Hotels meeting in Gran Canaria brings together around fifty chains and hotels: a technological day in key to the future, for the sector on the island.
  • The event held at the Salobre Hotel Resort & Serenity had the participation of Booking.com and the collaboration of ADDON Payments (La Caixa Group).
  • Dingus’ CEO and team at the event advanced the goals of the next decade for our products, services and technology solutions.

If you were unable to attend, or simply want to ‘refresh’ the memory of everything that was presented at the II Dingus&Hotels meeting held recently in Gran Canaria, here is a summary. These are just some of the data, reflections and objectives provided during the event, designed so that hotel companies could put a face to part of the team that makes possible the day-to-day between Dingus and its clients.

Using and sharing knowledge

Leading the expedition was the CEO and co-founder of Dingus, Jaume Monserrat, who spoke of the current moment as the turning point between the more than ten years we have been offering the hotel sector advanced technological solutions to optimise sales, and a future decade full of challenges. So that these are not threatening (especially in a market that evolves and changes with a speed that is difficult to calibrate) the great advantage of Dingus lies in the knowledge: of tourism, the hotel sector, technology and the business model of those to whom our products and services are directed. Thus, we work with 1,100 hotels in 25 countries, we manage more than 17,000 daily bookings, we maintain more than 15,500 active connectivities and we present a revenue management of our clients that exceeds 10 million euros per day. And that figure does not include the figure related to TTOO…

Knowledge has contributed to making Dingus what it is today, and is the basis of what it will be in the medium/long term. In this future context, we are committed to the unification of our entire technological offer and to increasing scalability. All this by means of products that are independent of each other, but modular, that can be related so that it is the client who chooses with which and how many they want to work. In short, and as announced by Monserrat, a Marketplace “where all our products can be connected bidirectionally, guaranteeing the traceability and security of the transaction… This will multiply the trading capacity of the aforementioned products, quickly and flexibly integrating any service/solution required”.

Simplify, optimize and make profitable

These are undoubtedly three essential premises for hotels that already work with Bookincenter, the central axis of the technological catalogue of Dingus… … But also from the Projects&Deployment department. Agustina Salord and Abigail Hernandorena explained the implementation work from the reception of the new client and the initial audit (which helps to adapt the tariff structure of the hotel to the current distribution in an easy, simple and agile way) to the training and, finally, the transfer to the Support team of all the advice that the user may require despite the management autonomy acquired.

However, implanters do not ‘disappear’… We know that the work system can change “either because of changes in the market, or because they want to try new alternatives to optimize sales. In these cases, by means of a consultancy similar to the one carried out at the beginning, everything is analysed and it is suggested how to restructure the tariffs, always looking for the best way to do it: perhaps with added value promotions, with the creation of new types of rooms or with help when it comes to making prices fluctuate more and thus becoming profitable”.  This is what we call adaptation of the tariff structure to the current distribution. Salord and Hernandorena also addressed inventory management in Dingus (availability) and sales visibility and optimization by “connecting with all desired channels and maintaining control of all of them from a single platform, easily”.

Growing portfolio

With Rodrigo Hernáez at the head, the commercial team integrated in this expedition by Serena Caporro and Narek Davtyan had the opportunity to introduce themselves to the hotels and chains of Gran Canaria with which they are already working, or are about to do so. On this occasion, the latest major project by Dingus ‘Book&Payment’ was presented in detail. At the initial service levels (tokenisation>shipment to the customer’s payment platform>card validation>individual collection with e-frame), pre-authorisation was added this October: it starts with simple authorisation and will continue in 2019 with the integration of all our products and mass payment. Also in the second half of next year, we will have the maximum benefits foreseen in the platform: pre authorization rules, collection rules and integration of rules to legacy systems.

Book&Payment (PCI-Collection Manager) has been designed “to manage your collections by validating and securing credit cards, complying at all times with PCI DSS regulations. It offers integration APIs for all our products and legacy systems, incorporation of your CashFlow to Revenue in real time, automation of all types of collections, connection to multiple payment gateways and reduction of intermediation costs”.

At this event held at the Salobre Hotel Resort & Serenity (whose staff we thank for their extraordinary contribution to its success), and since direct selling was one of the issues to be raised – in Spanish hotels it already represents 32% of the total – we also had the opportunity to remember the advantages of RoomOnline. It is our “integral solution of web+Booking Engine, created with the aim of improving profitability and boosting direct sales of our customers. We are profitable because our business model is based on scalability: we work by fixed monthly cost without charging commission and this means that, when the sales of the hotel increase, we continue charging the same, allowing each reservation to be cheaper for the hotelier. We leverage the direct selling strategy because, through the unification of web and booking engine, we allow our clients to improve the marketing of their hotels. RoL has become for 25% of our customers, who are already using the product, the second sales channel after Booking.com.

Collaboration to evolve

Precisely with this distribution channel, and convinced that constant evolution is a must, we are analysing the viability of developing new functionalities that allow users to improve their profitability. Jana Bravo and Iris Enríquez (Senior Account Manager and Account Executive of the Booking.com office in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria), together with Laura León, Connectivity Account Manager for Spain and Portugal, participated in this II meeting Dingus&Hoteles providing their recommendations on aspects such as the optimization of accommodation in Booking.com and connectivity. The experts of the platform, where every day more than 1,550,000 nights are booked and which makes a support team available to customers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, in more than 40 languages, reminded hotel professionals present that they only have 10 seconds to capture the attention of a user, who must be reached with image and content through the web and mobile devices”. This showcase reaffirms the classic that ‘an image is worth a thousand words’, also in the 21st century. They recalled that the focus should be on the best customer experience, that it is necessary to “be prepared when the customer is looking for his next trip” and that the current inspiration for Booking.com is that there are places where you stay, and places that stay in you“.

For her part, Laura Leon advanced that “the future of the support posed by the channel is global proactive assistance and then predictive assistance to anticipate the needs of customers. The hotel has to have all the information in the right time to adjust its availability by knowing, for example, when it is going to have more or less demand. This is one of the reasons why we work with technology providers such as Dingus, the repository of that information that can ensure good forecasting for the hotel”.


Half a hundred attendees in a wonderful environment

The choice of Gran Canaria for this meeting was no coincidence. A very important part of our client portfolio is concentrated on the island. Many of them accompanied us on this day in which we also had the collaboration of ADDON Payments. The La Caixa Group representative who attended the event was the Account Manager, Nauzet Plasencia, who recalled that the PCI DSS regulation “is determined by the payment card industry, and that banking and financial institutions work to ensure that electronic payment is secure in compliance with that regulation, with the obligations that this implies”.

The group of participants was completed with representatives of Altamar Hotels&Resorts; Dunas Resorts&Hotels; Nordotel; THe Hotels; Paradise Hotels&Resorts; R2 Hotels; VIK Hotels; H10 Hotels; BeLive Hotels; Servatur SA;BeCordial Hotels&Resorts; HD Hotels; Lopesan Hotel Group; MS-e-commerce Hotel and Hotel Puerto de Las Nieves.

A thousand thanks and see you next time!