SINGAPORE – ZUMATA, a Singapore-based hotel distribution and technology company, along with DHISCO, the world's leading hospitality distribution company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, today announced a reciprocal agreement aimed to increase each other's hotel inventory while accelerating their mutual geographic expansion of distribution.

ZUMATA, through its extensive network of wholesale partners and channel managers will supplement DHISCO's inventory by providing over 500,000 instantly bookable hotel properties. For ZUMATA, DHISCO will facilitate distribution of this hotel inventory to its large customer base largely based in North America and other Western markets.

"DHISCO has been an industry powerhouse for years, and yet their management is keenly focused on innovation," said ZUMATA CEO Josh Ziegler. "This partnership underscores their commitment to staying at ahead of their competition by embracing the latest technological advancements. For us, this partnership represents a significant opportunity for our partners to gain access to DHISCO's amazing distribution. Complementing inventory and distribution, our artificial intelligence, or AI, powered technology will add exciting new capabilities that can increase customer satisfaction while increasing performance and conversions for all of us."

Furthering vast technical capabilities, domain expertise, and an extensive hotel inventory, ZUMATA is looking to make travel more personal again. With this vision in mind, ZUMATA was showcased by IBM as an anchor travel technology partner during the opening of IBM's Watson Centre at Marina Bay, a new business incubator and research facility in Singapore. Watson, perhaps best known for beating humans at Jeopardy, is an artificial intelligence platform that is adept at natural language processing and learns from each interaction.

DHISCO partners will now be able to search in plain English, and seven other languages, for features, sentiments, and any other criteria relevant to the traveler instead of the current generic search which is solely based on date and destination.

For example, a customer might type "I need a luxury hotel in Sydney with a view of the opera house, an indoor pool and free Wifi." Results returned will display images of the hotel view, amenities, and sentiments about the hotel from a wide range of sources including existing hotel descriptions and amenities alongside other travelers' online reviews. This level of personalization is aimed at making the entire customer journey from booking through customer service, more convenient, more relevant, and ultimately tailored to the needs of the individual traveler.

Looking at the other side of the partnership, ZUMATA's use of DHISCO's 100,000+ properties, which are the result of direct connectivity and relationships with the world's largest hotel chains, will increase ZUMATA's inventory, bring its customers one step closers to these hotels, and help DHISCO expand their footprint into the fast-growing Asian and Pacific markets.

"This partnership is an exciting win-win for DHISCO and ZUMATA," said DHISCO CEO Toni Portmann, "enabling both companies to scale quickly into new markets to offer the largest inventory of quality hotel rooms in every part of the world."

"We are also, obviously, very excited about ZUMATA's work with Watson on artificial intelligence and its potential for developing next-generation solutions for natural language capabilities, machine learning to drive better search results and predictive pricing. ZUMATA has a stellar track record. We like the problems they're tackling now and in the future. We like the way they think."

About ZUMATA

ZUMATA is the only AI-powered hotel distribution company in the world, delivering consolidated online hotel inventory of over 500,000 properties globally. Accurate mapping, cognitive computing and significant supplier overlap help b2b partners achieve lower cost prices, decrease reliance on a single supplier, and optimize customer conversions. Founded in 2010, ZUMATA is headquartered in Singapore.

About DHISCO Inc.

DHISCO Inc. is the world's original and leading hospitality distribution company, providing the most reliable and advanced technology to connect hotels around the world with online travel agencies, global distribution systems, metasearch engines and other travel partners. Since 1989, DHISCO has built its reputation on providing the most efficient and affordable means to market, capture and book hotel reservations. Today, it moves more than 9 billion transactions a month for more than 110,000 hotels.

Josh Ziegler
CEO
ZUMATA