In a transformative era of corporate travel and mobility, AltoVita’s product suite is designed to streamline and enhance corporate accommodation management. At the heart of this innovation is the realisation that nearly half of all business travel costs are tied to accommodation, a statistic highlighted by Vivi Himmel, CEO and Co-founder, during the Product Reveal session at the Smart, Safe and Sustainable Summit.
This article will unveil AltoVita's journey from conception to the technological forefront, addressing the industry's legacy challenges with groundbreaking solutions like AltoSearch, AltoCurate, AltoInsights and Alto30—each tailored to enhance transparency, efficiency, and user experience in corporate travel.
What you will read:
Addressing Key Challenges in Global Accommodation
The AltoVita Product Suite: A Comprehensive Solution to Corporate Accommodation
AltoInsights Escalation Dashboard: Handling Escalations In Real-Time
AltoInsights Cost Saving Dashboard: Real-time Data Transparency on Spend
Integration with International SOS: Safety and Security
Highlighting EcoStats: Sustainability Within Reach
AltoCore: The go-to bidding tool
The genesis of AltoVita is rooted in solving a significant problem in the corporate accommodation industry. Legacy corporate accommodation infrastructure is full of CRM tools that have been repurposed to send accommodation requests and replies are done manually via emails, PDFs, and so on.
This multi-layered process creates a cascading commission structure, inflating the end price for the client.
One of the biggest challenges in this system is the lack of clear accountability. With so many layers, who is ultimately responsible for ensuring the best employee experience? Legacy infrastructure means that corporate accommodation often lacks a scalable system, personalisation, flexibility, and, most importantly, transparency.
In response, AltoVita has created AltoVerse—a multi-award-winning enterprise software suite that embodies innovation and commitment to excellence in corporate accommodation.
AltoSearch is a self-service booking platform that provides customised inventory, tailored policies, real-time updates, and live availability. It streamlines corporate accommodation bookings for employees, while offering travel or global mobility managers reliable compliance and control. With access to preferred inventory, exclusive corporate negotiated rates, and AltoVita consortia rates, AltoSearch ensures a seamless booking experience that balances user convenience with stringent policy enforcement for organisations.
AltoCurate is a high-touch solution that delivers a fully curated flow of vetted accommodation options tailored to each request, incorporating an approval layer before any booking is confirmed. Supported by our dedicated customer success managers, AltoCurate streamlines the entire process—from selecting accommodation options and booking to guest check-in and maximising employee satisfaction. With AltoCurate, users benefit from a managed process, 24/7 customer service, cost savings, and compliance with corporate travel policies. This approach ensures a personalised, efficient, and secure experience for global temporary accommodation needs.
Launched in 2023, this tool addresses a significant industry pain point by streamlining large-scale accommodation bookings. It offers flexible management of dates and unit types and simplifies the handling of multiple bookings, making it an essential tool for complex logistical challenges.
Addressing the need for a consolidated view of accommodation booking data, AltoInsights delivers an intuitive interface and advanced filters for custom data views. It offers detailed insights into key metrics, including total spend, number of requests and bookings, average daily rate (ADR) along with global ADR market pricing for benchmarking purposes, sustainability metrics (EcoStats), CSAT scores, escalations, lead times, and Top 25 lists. This enables users to interpret complex information more intuitively, identify trends, and make data-driven decisions, all of which are crucial for reporting and cost containment.
Highlighting its significance, Vivi notes that AltoCore “is its own product and deserves its own reveal,” underscoring its standalone value and robust capabilities.
AltoCore streamlines the booking process and optimises supply chain management, covering every aspect from procurement to guest experience. Users can fully customise their supply chain by selecting suppliers from AltoVita's trusted network or integrating their preferred partners. The platform enhances efficiency by providing access to AltoVita's extensive inventory of vetted accommodations, while also offering significant cost savings through consortia and negotiated corporate rates.
AltoCore simplifies the sourcing, comparison, and evaluation of accommodation options, enabling quicker decision-making. Shortlists can be easily created for employee review, and bookings can be secured with just a few clicks, further improving efficiency through automation and seamless workflows.
AltoVita’s scalable, flexible, and customisable platform is powered by AltoOne, a proprietary property management system, managing 7 million API and content integrated units in 35,000 locations across 165 countries.
Within AltoCurate, a new sourcing tool has been introduced that empowers the Customer Success team to strategically and efficiently source accommodation options tailored to user needs. Additionally, the platform has been enhanced with integrations for International SOS, Single Sign-On (SSO), and group bookings to streamline user experiences.
AltoOne has been upgraded with a powerful AI algorithm capable of instantly scraping content from any website globally, ensuring users have access to the latest and most relevant information.
AltoSearch now includes an integrated preferred supplier feature, allowing users to negotiate and securely store their preferred rates. Beyond serviced apartments, AltoSearch has expanded its offerings to include hotel bookings, broadening the scope of accommodations available through AltoVita.
A standout feature that distinctly positions AltoVita ahead of its competitors is the AltoInsights Escalation Dashboard. This innovative tool offers real-time transparency in managing escalations, providing users with detailed qualitative information, response times, and resolution rates. It serves as a crucial resource for auditing past performance and refining policies, enabling clients to maintain stringent control over their corporate accommodation strategies. This feature is unique in the market, allowing clients to comprehensively audit performance and strategically redefine their policies for future improvements.
AltoInsights revolutionises corporate accommodation management reporting by delivering advanced analytics and insights. This powerful tool equips clients with comprehensive data on escalations and cost savings, empowering them to make informed decisions and optimise their accommodation strategies effectively.
Enhancing both transparency and efficiency, AltoVita's sophisticated reporting features are poised to transform the way businesses handle their corporate accommodation needs, setting a new standard in the industry.
AltoVita's integration with International SOS seamlessly merges accommodation services with advanced safety measures, including real-time travel alerts, 24/7 global medical and security support, crisis management, and pre-travel planning. These features ensure that travellers are well-prepared and supported worldwide, allowing for timely employee mobilisation during emergencies.
This integration not only strengthens compliance but also significantly enhances the overall safety and security of travellers. AltoVita remains at the forefront of technology integration, utilising a modern tech stack that incorporates advanced API and AI capabilities, further solidifying its leadership in the industry.
AltoVita takes pride in the EcoStats feature, which was launched at the end of 2023 with an impressive turnaround time of just 10 days. As highlighted by Carol Fergus during her closing remarks at the Summit, AltoVita's swift execution is unmatched in the market, reflecting the company's commitment to delivering actionable sustainability insights that empower clients to make environmentally responsible decisions.
EcoStats provides detailed CO2 emissions data per night per property, in collaboration with Thurst Carbon. In 2024, AltoVita further enhanced this capability by introducing CO2 reporting within AltoInsights, allowing users to refine data by filtering by dates, location, and business line.
During the product reveal, it was emphasised that AltoOne stands as a product in its own right, empowering clients to effectively self-manage their supply chain. This self-sustaining supply management tool is designed to streamline and optimise the entire supply chain process, providing clients with full visibility and control over every aspect, from procurement to guest experience.
With AltoCore, clients can easily onboard and manage their entire supply chain. Preferred suppliers now have the opportunity to bid on incoming requests, creating a competitive environment that ensures the best pricing. Additionally, hospitality operatros can review their performance metrics, identifying areas for improvement and fostering a culture of continuous enhancement and collaboration.
AltoVita's latest product, Alto360, is the result of extensive collaboration between clients, hospitality partners and the product team. This groundbreaking tool offers instantaneous forecasting and benchmarking capabilities—an industry first in the extended stay corporate accommodation sector. The current market is outdated, relying heavily on emails and phone calls to predict data from an extended stay perspective.
Alto360 revolutionises this process by allowing businesses to instantly forecast accommodation costs and benchmark their policies against real-time market data. This empowers companies to strategically and proactively design their accommodation programs on a global scale. By leveraging AI capabilities, historical pricing, occupancy data from our API integrations with Property Management Systems and Channel Managers, and overall market trends, Alto360 predicts future price and estimates costs within seconds.
In the context of today's business environment, where restructuring and cost management are paramount, the ability to understand and forecast travel expenses is crucial. As Carol Fergus, Director of Global Travel, Meetings, and Ground Transportation at Fidelity, emphasised during the closing remarks of the Smart, Safe, and Sustainable Summit, tools like Alto360 are invaluable. They provide predictive insights into travel costs that align with business objectives, optimising budgeting and enhancing decision-making processes. These capabilities not only drive fiscal responsibility but also elevate the professional standing of those who utilise them by demonstrating forward-thinking and strategic management.
These achievements have significantly enhanced AltoVita’s competitive edge and distinctive market positioning. A key differentiator is the company’s innovative mindset and agility, enabling the development of customizable solutions tailored to client needs within weeks.
For instance, AltoVita successfully built a well-curated corporate accommodation programme for PwC in just five months. This process involved extensive customisation with co-designed products like AltoCurate and AltoSearch. The platform was then seamlessly integrated into PwC’s extranet, including integration with Workday (PwC’s HRIS) and other platforms, such as relocation management companies, streamlining the entire relocation workflow.
Anton Reid, AltoVita’s Director of Engineering, emphasised the platform's connectivity, stating, "Our technology is highly connected. We focus on building robust, scalable APIs that go beyond merely taking requests and finding inventory. We ensure seamless integration with your reporting systems."
As AltoVita expands its functionality to integrate with Online Booking Tools (OBTs), it now offers seamless inventory management within client applications. This allows clients to effortlessly pull AltoVita's inventory into their front-end systems, complete with maps and customised pinpoints, facilitating the booking process directly or through other providers and suppliers.
Anton also highlighted that AltoVita is powered by the AWS cloud, with technology deployed exclusively in sustainable regions that ensure 100% renewable energy attribution.
Data privacy and security are fundamental to everything AltoVita builds. The company's processes ensure that security is integrated at every step. With ISO 27001 certification, AltoVita has undergone rigorous audits to validate its data and security capabilities. The company also undergoes continuous annual audits to ensure it consistently meets the highest security standards and drives continuous improvement.
As AltoVita continues to lead and innovate, the company remains committed to transforming the corporate accommodation landscape. With tools like Alto360, AltoCore, and EcoStats, AltoVita not only meets the immediate needs of its clients but also anticipates future trends, ensuring they are equipped to manage their accommodation requirements efficiently and sustainably.