Building a better travel business with Open Distribution
Charlie Cowley, Impala’s Co-founder and Head of Strategic Sales, paints a colourful picture: Behind a door is a group of hoteliers, each with a dozen empty rooms they’d like for your business to help fill.
But there’s a bouncer waiting by the door. They insist that only they can know who’s in that room, and only they can speak to them and conduct business on your behalf.
And if you want to access a different room of hotel owners behind another door? Well, that means you have to deal with a different bouncer, and they’ll only do business on their schedule—and your dime.
This is the reality that room sellers have been living with for almost as long as online booking has existed. As a result, the business of travel hasn’t evolved—and the guest experience has stagnated.
“Travellers book hotel rooms today the same way they have over the last ten years, and it’s incredibly frustrating for everyone,” says Charlie. “Very few OTAs or travel companies can sell hotel rooms on a grand scale because of how fragmented and limited the infrastructure is.”
In the current ecosystem, if a room seller wants to connect with a new hotel, they’re forced to waste their time and resources dealing with outdated technology and slow, complex integrations. This leaves almost nothing for them to invest into creating new guest experiences and strategically growing their audience.
Open Distribution changes that. By cutting out intermediaries, this new model for distribution allows travel businesses to access supply directly, which opens up a world of new possibilities.
Opening new doors
Built on easy-to-integrate technology that exists adjacent to - but not within - the existing PMS, channel manager and distribution ecosystems, Open Distribution makes it faster and easier for room sellers to get the data they need from hotels. Impala’s core API provides room sellers with full and accurate content, rates and availability for all our hotels.
As a seller, broad access to better data means freedom. Freedom to negotiate rates, freedom to connect with the hotels that are right for your audience, and freedom to invest your resources where they’ll do the most work for your business.
“Our role is to provide the tools for room sellers to take ownership of their hotel bookings,” Charlie says. “You have the flexibility to play around with our API as much as you want, and use it in ways that suit you and your customer best.”
Simply put, Open Distribution is open to use as you wish. And with Impala, you have the added support of an experienced team who can shape our tools to best serve your business.
“We align with your goals and work closely with your team to provide solutions that achieve these goals—and we can offer customised service for your customers,” Charlie explains.
Time is on our side
Historically, building supply is a time suck that can slow new OTAs from getting off the ground. But Open Distribution flips that. Impala can connect you with our network of hotels in moments—not the six months to one year that the industry has come to expect.
Once connected, we do all the heavy lifting of getting you the data you need, onboarding more hotels, and even handling customer service and payments as you’d like. With the freedom provided by Open Distribution, you can focus on building the relationships you want with the properties and markets that mean the most to your platform.
“Sign up today, play around, and go live quickly,” says Charlie.
Learn more about Open Distribution and start selling with Impala today to access your dream inventory and carve out a new, better experience for your guests.
