The Xeni Solution
Last updated
Last updated
Overview: solving the four major pain points in selling travel online
Xeni’s ecosystem addresses the major pain points for travelers, travel professionals, and inventory suppliers in one seamless solution. Pain point 1: accessing wholesale inventory Travel professionals earn a living by charging commissions on bookings. But they can’t simply buy published-rate inventory off Expedia and resell it to their clients at a further markup - clients would not accept those higher prices. So, travel professionals need access to discounted (wholesale) inventory. In the current state of the market, there are huge barriers (structural and technological) to accessing wholesale inventory. Xeni has eliminated these hurdles for travel resellers, providing instant access to a broad selection of inventory at wholesale rates.
Pain point 2: manual processes that inhibit growth for travel pro’s and diminish traveler experience
Because there is no purpose-built CRM for travel, travel professionals must slog through time consuming processes to engage with clients and maintain records. Interviews with travel professionals suggest they are currently primarily using Google Sheets, Whatsapp, and text messages to retain their records and communicate with travelers. Xeni has built an integrated CRM tailored to the needs of travel professionals. Without Xeni, reselling travel involves a labor intensive, slow process that represents a barrier to scaling and competing with the OTAS
Pain point 3: how to actually sell travel online? How to launch a custom booking engine, customer portal, online payments? It is very difficult for travel professionals to resell travel online in a bookable format, while still earning a commission (short of building out an elaborate and expensive booking site on their own). But travelers have become accustomed to logging on to an OTA site to shop for travel, seeing their own bookings history and upcoming trips, and paying online. Unfortunately, this sophisticated web-based system is complex and expensive to build. An online search will reveal many companies offering to develop these solutions, but they require custom engineering work and are costly and slow. Xeni has created a “Shopify for travel” system where anyone can spin out their own custom OTA in just a few minutes, in a no-code integration with no set-up fees Pain point 4: the archaic payment system in travel hurts everyone - it’s slow, expensive and unsecure. The current form of payments in travel works like a waterfall (sequential settlement of counterparties) with long settlement times; the XeniPay state will feature instant settlement of all counterparties. XeniPay disintermediates unnecessary layers in travel payments settlement, thereby delivering ~2.5 – 4.5% savings on the total cost of bookings. Finally, by eliminating credit card intermediaries, Xeni can dramatically reduce fraudulent bookings.
