HOTEL - How to hide 'Not Available' hotels

[Travelante]

How to hide 'Not available' properties during Hotel search? Is there a filter or a configuration? Users do not need to see the hotels where they can't stay. Sometimes many hotels are 'in red' so we get escalations that something is wrong with the system itself..

[KevinD]

@Travelante the only option I could find in the Travel Rule builder was Rate description contains any of text. This allows you to enter specific phrases to look for. However, I don't know if the Not Available is considered part of the rate description. The other rule condition that might work is: Other rate descriptions at this hotel contain any of the text.

Again, not sure if Not Available is tied to the rate description or not. You would need to create and activate the rule,then test it.

[Travelante]

Hi Kevin,

Thank you for your answer! We are already using the 'rate description' to exclude non-ref or deposit-required options. Unfortunately, 'Not available' cannot be controlled via this functionaity.

Can you please share Concur recommended best-practise for this case? Sometimes when there is a conference/event in a city we get entire pages of these 'not available' properties and it is frustrating.

Thank you!

[Munari_alEXPert]

dear @Travelante,

did you tried to speak with your corporate travel agency? they might can help with the data feed you receive into Concur system and hide unavailable hotels?  

[Travelante]

Hi @Munari_alEXPert,

Yes, we escalated the case to them and the answer was that they couldn't hide these properties as there was no consistency to if/when they display as available..

[leedau]

@Travelante Thanks for the follow up post. Have you looked into why these hotels are showing up as Not Available?

If the hotels are sold out - you users can update they search result filters to Hide Sold Out hotel:

However, if these hotels are being displayed as Not Available based on your company policy or travel configuration rules, then you could consider updating the rule to Hide Results instead of Show, but Do Not Allow. However, SAP Concur recommends using the Show,  but Do Not Allow rule action with a message to the traveler to understand why they cannot book the hotel. Hiding vendors is never the best practice as the user will believe the tool is broken because they see the option available on other websites.

I am including a link to the Approvals, Rules and Classes/Policies Travel Service Guide. 

Does this help?

Remember to tag me if you respond or feel free to mark this post as Solved if you don't have further questions or comments. To tag me on your response, you click the Reply button, first thing to type is @. This should bring up the username of the person you are replying to.

[Travelante]

Hi @leedau,

The rates are being pulled from Sabre and when no rates are available in the GDS it shows in Concur as Not Available. It seems that the rates can be available one day and not the next. 

'The filter you suggested to use hides only 'Sold Out' properties but doesn't help with the 'Not Available' (pleasee see the image below).

The properties which are policy-controlled are hidden using the Travel Rule builder/Rate description and are shown (if the company chooses to show them) as 'Not Allowed', so once again doesn't help us with the 'Not Available' properties ;(

[leedau]

@Travelante Thanks for the follow up post. It sounds like you have tried all the options I can think off. I would recommend that you consider submitting an improvement request. To view a new improvement request or vote on an existing improvement request, please visit the Customer Influence Website.

[Travelante]

@leedau , thank you for the suggestion. Unfortunatelly, based on our experience these suggestions don't work. The website is really not user friendly and suggestions are not added to Concur's roadmap in a timely manner. 😞

[Travelante]

Another example:

Searching for a hotel just for one night and still getting the results as below:

#1 in the search results - what's the value of showing this to the users?..