Whether it’s travel merchants, such as travel management companies (TMCs), or accommodation suppliers, like hotel chains, hospitality organizations have long been challenged with fulfilling payments and reconciliation-related tasks, which fall outside their core competencies. 

Not only does this make it more challenging to create a positive customer experience, but it also creates a significant drain on time and resources.

Travel companies don't enter this industry because they enjoy chasing down invoices, reconciling payments in different currencies, or dealing with outdated back-office systems.

They do it for their passion: delivering seamless journeys, building trust with clients/customers, and creating travel experiences that make people feel valued from booking to check-out.

Unfortunately, the technology available to support these dedicated travel professionals has historically been fragmented, cumbersome, and created by individuals who have never spent a night on the phone rescheduling a client's flight, making last-minute accommodation changes, or navigating the complexities of corporate travel policies.

What should embody hospitality at scale too often devolves into administrative chaos that is misleadingly labeled as "solutions."

Wyndham’s SVP, Revenue Management & Distribution, Vikram Pradhan, said it best, “I wish the front desk never had to deal with payments at all. They could just stand there, smile, welcome guests, and provide great service. That would be Utopia."

The problem is obvious, but how can we reach this Utopia? The answer lies in emerging technology. 

AI is the most significant trend in the business world, so it's no surprise that it has made its way to hospitality. Travel tech companies are building with it and for it. 

One such example is DerbySoft, which has leveraged AI to alleviate payment-related problems in the industry with its AI Voice Agents. According to the company’s own estimation, at least 30% of accommodation bookings require a phone or email follow-up for tasks such as invoice corrections to support VAT reclaims.

That’s why DerbySoft automates outbound calls to verify and retrieve these details, then pushes the information back to TMCs and other clients. 

While this is a good interim improvement, it’s more of a patchwork fix than a long-term solution. DerbySoft’s Head of Business Travel Solutions, Nadim El Manawy, confirms this: “AI voice shouldn’t be the solution. Long term, all of this should be properly automated.” 

He’s entirely right! However, before proper automations and systemic improvements can be implemented, hospitality first needs the “rails” to support them. 

That’s why Katanox is approaching AI differently with a long-term vision.

Katanox has developed infrastructure to deliver financial solutions and AI applications, connecting data from booking to reconciliation to automatically process millions of hotel content requests and transactions in a seamless process.

Whether it’s supporting AI companies breaking into the travel sector or transforming traditional hospitality companies for the age of AI, Katanox provides the platform and tools needed to be successful in today’s (and tomorrow’s) business climate. 

Katanox links together the core elements of hospitality trading into a unified framework, which includes:

Distribution

Connectivity: A single, cost-effective connection provides access to 100s of partners, eliminating the need to build separate integrations.

Contracting: Accommodation suppliers and travel merchants from around the world can quickly and easily come to terms with integrated contracting, building direct relationships.

Booking: Properties are consistently displayed across all platforms with engaging content and the best available rates. 

Expense processing: An endpoint delivers instant invoice and folio data to agents, which includes booking and payment information to support automated travel and expense processing, as well as tax reclaim data reporting.

Payment services

Payouts: VCs and CCs are replaced with automated direct bank transfers to reduce payment costs, enhance acceptance rates, and improve cashflow. 

Reconciliation: Katanox unifies reconciliation and payment of partner commissions to improve efficiency, increase transparency, and reduce administrative overhead.

Deploying financial infrastructure is the foundation for running a successful hospitality business today.

By consolidating payment processes with other core business operations, such as connectivity, contracting, and booking, companies can deploy automations to enhance organizational efficiency and improve the customer experience.

It’s clear that for companies in any industry to be successful, they need integrated solutions that streamline core operations, enabling them to run their businesses efficiently and effectively. 

This is, in fact, Katanox's defining characteristic. While numerous tools exist to aid hospitality with distribution or finance operations (and even streamline the operations within these silos), Katanox is the true end-to-end solution that connects and automates the entire hospitality trading process. 

Wolfgang Emperger,
SVP, Shiji, puts it another way, “all-in-one platforms are quietly becoming the go-to choice. Not because they're flawless, but because they offer something that’s becoming essential: simplicity and cohesion. One contract, one service level agreement, and one vendor who takes full responsibility. That’s more than convenience, it’s peace of mind.”