EVT took a chance on a young SiteMinder and never looked back

Sydney, Australia – In 2007, a well-established hotel company placed its faith – and a key part of its operations – in the hands of an industry newcomer.

Almost two decades and various tech evolutions later, the partnership between EVT and SiteMinder is still going strong.

David Tuza watched the relationship unfold from both sides, first while working for SiteMinder in its beginnings, and over the last 10 years as an employee of EVT.

Tuza, now EVT general manager digital & distribution, hospitality, says SiteMinder was an upstart that managed to provide a higher quality service at a better price than the dominant hotel tech provider of the time.

He says scoring a deal with EVT (then known as AHL) was a “feather in the cap” for the newly-launched SiteMinder, which in turn bolstered EVT’s growth in Australasia.

“It’s been a long relationship, and SiteMinder has continued to improve their flagship product, always keeping up with industry trends and a changing distribution landscape,” he says.

EVT’s growing portfolio 

EVT currently manages a portfolio of more than 100 hotels across Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Fiji, and is working to expand its locations through Southeast Asia.

Rydges is EVT’s flagship brand; Tuza describes it as a popular location-driven choice for both leisure and business travellers. QT is more upmarket and boutique, and Atura presides in more urban locales. LyLo, meanwhile, offers budget-friendly pod-style accommodation. EVT also operates a collection of smaller indie hotels that retain distinct identities and strong connections with local communities.

Tuza says the company’s brands in Australia and New Zealand are particularly popular with domestic travellers, who account for the majority of stays.

Return customers are also common across EVT’s portfolio, and Tuza says the reason why extends beyond the standard of friendly staff and great service.

“Ultimately when somebody walks in the door, you want it to be a good location, a great hotel and a quality place to stay.”

Also key to EVT’s growing business is SiteMinder’s hotel commerce platform, which has evolved alongside industry changes over the past 20 years.

SiteMinder lightens the load

Tuza says no matter which OTA is most dominant at any given time, EVT trusts SiteMinder to keep track of market movements and to ensure booking and inventory information is automatically kept up-to-date across all connected systems.

“SiteMinder allows us to do that all in one place,” he says.

“It wouldn’t be doable for a group of our size to be manually updating all of the different travel websites with our prices and availability.”

SiteMinder also takes the complexity out of OTAs’ individual offers, ranging from pay now/pay later to ‘opaque’ rates. Because SiteMinder intercepts the extra work these features can create for hoteliers, Tuza says EVT’s distribution and revenue services teams can become further specialised in their core areas of work and focused on driving more revenue.

“For the distribution team’s workload, managing OTAs is probably the easiest part, largely thanks to SiteMinder,” he says.

“Similarly, the revenue services team don’t have to spend a great deal of time thinking, ‘How am I displaying on different OTAs?’ or, ‘What’s the difference between wholesalers and fit rates?’” 

“There are a lot of OTAs out there, and they all want to get their fingers in the pie in terms of bookings for our hotels. SiteMinder making that super easy for us lets the teams focus on doing what we’re good at, and we can also feed SiteMinder’s data into our in-house reporting.”

A partnership that drives progress

The benefits of SiteMinder’s connectivity capabilities are not limited to OTA management. Tuza says SiteMinder’s ability to connect to different property management systems (PMS) helps EVT when pitching new management agreements to hotels.

“We know SiteMinder connects to just about every PMS in the world, so we can use the existing connectivity those hotels have with SiteMinder to help us bridge the gap with the hotel and hook them into our environment.”

Tuza says SiteMinder is also constantly pushing the envelope to find the next best thing, and the line of communication between the companies remains strong. He cites a new feature currently in development by SiteMinder, which he describes as a ‘game changer’ that could remove up to 30 per cent of the steps in the process for EVT’s distribution team.

“As a longtime partner, we’re happy to be a sounding board for SiteMinder. Similarly, we can go to them and say, ‘We really need this,’ and they’re generally happy to have that conversation and see what they can do,” he says.

“SiteMinder is a tech company first, so I expect that they’re doing some interesting work in the AI space and look forward to ways we may be able to integrate this in the future.”

Amidst ‘seismic shifts’ in the hotel industry, Tuza says EVT’s faith in SiteMinder remains unshaken.