Best of 2023
As we bid farewell to another transformative year, it's time to take a look back and reflect on some of the biggest news and events from Grasp. In the ever-evolving realm of business travel, 2023 has been marked by innovation, efficiency, and adaptability. Our commitment to providing state-of-the-art solutions has allowed us to witness firsthand the remarkable strides made within the industry. From enhanced traveler experiences to streamlined logistics, this year has been a testament to the resilience and ingenuity of businesses worldwide. Join us as we take a journey through the best of 2023, exploring some of the new tools and technologies that we have introduced, and some of our favorite memories and events.
3 New Solutions Released in 2023
graspTUESDAY
On June 6th, graspTUESDAY was released into the market. The purpose of this new product is to streamline the ARC reconciliation process. Designed to simplify operations and enhance accuracy, graspTUESDAY reduces the need for manual processing, empowering travel agencies to reach unparalleled efficiency.
“graspTUESDAY is a game-changer in ARC reconciliation, allowing travel agencies to reclaim both time and top talent by increasing efficiency. As the industry embraces automation, this technology allows agencies to streamline processes, free up talent from tedious tasks, and optimize to scale the business.”
-Chris Smith, CTO, Grasp Technologies
Traditionally, ARC reconciliation has been a time-consuming and error-prone task, often resulting in missed deadlines, penalties, and financial setbacks. With graspTUESDAY, those challenges become a thing of the past. This innovative solution can help reduce the time to do the ARC reconciliation process by ensuring timely execution, error prevention, and creating efficiencies.
graspANALYTICS
On August 24th, Grasp announced the release of graspANALYTICS, a new visualization solution designed to help businesses make informed decisions. graspANALYTICS leverages the underlying graspDATA platform for clean, normalized, and complete data along with the familiarity and fluid visualization of the Microsoft PowerBI Platform.
The goal of graspANALYTICS is to provide companies with the ability to make strategic decisions from the data analyzed across sources, including expense, HR, booking tools, and corporate card data, as well as data from multiple TMCs, systems, or subsidiaries. The solution provides comprehensive insights into areas such as forecasted trends across spend; potential areas for increased savings; vendor analysis; CO2 emissions report for ESG initiatives; traveler well-being reports; and what-if analysis that scopes out the impact of potential changes to your business.
graspIQ
“Poor data quality is enemy number one to the widespread, profitable use of machine learning. The quality demands of machine learning are steep, and bad data can rear its ugly head twice both in the historical data used to train the predictive model and in the new data used by that model to make future decisions.”
graspIQ utilizes advanced algorithms, rules, and data validation techniques to identify and rectify errors where it can. A key feature of graspIQ, is the scorecard which reflects in simple terms the true state of your organization's data and its quality. With graspIQ eliminating inaccuracies, organizations gain confidence in the integrity of data, in knowledge that they can go on to make more reliably informed decisions.
graspIQ maintains data quality using trusted out of the box rules, developed over decades by Grasp, as well as bespoke and specific rules which can reflect the needs of any organization. For example, if you are expecting a UDID or identifier to follow a certain format and always be mandatory, graspIQ will incorporate the rule as part of the evaluation criteria, allowing you to monitor, track and ensure your data reflects the needs of your business.
Webinar Spotlight
On September 6th, we held one of our largest webinars alongside Tres Technologies.
In this webinar, we explore the new landscape of back office/CRM innovation and integration. We look at how agencies are able to scale more cost effectively while avoiding the expense of simply employing more staff. Additionally, we examine how agency workflow can benefit from integration, to help future proof your agency and make life easier at the same time.
It’s crucial to thoroughly assess your current and future purposes, agency process and your people, when considering travel technology, so we also delve into how to evaluate and select the most suitable integrations for your agency, considering compatibility, scalability, ease of implementation and expertise.
If you haven’t watched this webinar, we highly recommend you do!
Grasp Thought’s from 2023
With the New NDC Push, What Travel Managers Should Consider
New Distribution Capability (NDC) standards allow airlines to offer more personalized and customized travel experiences to their customers. It allows airlines to distribute richer content, better personalize their offers, and sell ancillary services more effectively through third-party vendors.
Digital transformation of the airlines’ ancillary offerings for travel agencies and enterprises is a good start for being able to capture this data in a more standardized format, however that means more considerations are needed to get a clearer picture of spend and leakage, such as: Does NDC flow into the existing systems? How to consider standardizing ancillary offering to be able to properly categorize and report on these ancillary products? Do certain processes with NDC cause travelers to book directly with airlines?
For corporations, it can be difficult to calculate total spend when employees are booking out of channel (and directly with airlines or elsewhere), and it's even harder to meet contractual thresholds when there is travel leakage. In addition, parts of ancillary services and bundles may be covered within the corporate travel policy, whereas other parts may not.
For tips on how to develop the best strategy, use the button below.
What We’ve Discovered about Hotel Commissions
Did you know on average $59 of hotel commission is missed per booking? That is a lot of missed revenue, especially considering that hotel commissions are a source of income for travel agencies.
One interesting point to note is that when looking at the average hotel commission based on the star rating of the hotel, there is a significant drop in dollars paid out from 4 star hotels. This is due to the fact that many hotels within this star rating are premium brands that offer exceptionally good value.
For a summary of hotel commissions data that we collected and analyzed, as well as some very common misconceptions, use the button below.
Happy Holidays!
With a total of 3 new innovations released, 2023 has been a major year for Grasp. As we reflect on everything that has happened this year, we are not only celebrating the advancements we have made to help businesses with their travel data, but also anticipating the exciting possibilities that lie ahead. With a commitment to pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, Grasp is poised to continue leading the charge in providing comprehensive data solutions for the business travel industry. Thank you for joining us on this remarkable journey, and here’s to an even more extraordinary 2024!
