A pre-webinar Q&A with Hakim Cherif, Hotel Product Director at Oversee, and Sam Basson, Customer Solutions Manager.
Ahead of our upcoming BTN webinar, “The Upgrade Paradox: Why Strict Hotel Policies Leave Savings, and Better Stays, on the Table,” we sat down with Hakim Cherif, Hotel Product Director at Oversee, to talk about what actually separates a hotel reshopping program that performs from one that is leaving value untapped. The conversation is relevant for travel buyers, TMC program leaders, and anyone responsible for the performance of a corporate hotel program. Sam Basson, Customer Solutions Manager at Oversee, led the discussion.
Sam: Many travel professionals come to me convinced their hotel program is already optimized to the max. And I get it. They have negotiated their rates, they have built their policy, they have selected their preferred properties. But more often than not, when we look closely, there is value sitting there that they did not know was available, especially around reshopping. When I walk them through how to set up reshop, I always tell them the same thing: it is not about choosing the strictest settings across the board. Hakim, why is that so often the trap people fall into?
Hakim: The instinct to set strict rules everywhere makes complete sense. People want to protect spend and protect travelers. But when a program is over-constrained across every variable, the room type, the cancellation window, the amenity bundle, the upside available to capture becomes narrower than it needs to be. The result is a policy that looks disciplined on paper while quietly leaving real value behind.
Reshop is also not only a savings tool. Online booking tools tend to enforce a nightly rate cap and not much else, which leaves room for travelers to add upgrades, premium views, or pick a property that barely qualifies. A good reshop product catches those moments and applies the policy with more precision. Reshop becomes a policy-aligned safety net, not just a discount mechanism.
Sam: Speaking of those rules, amenities come up a lot in my conversations. Travel managers often build their policy around very specific amenity requirements. What is an example of an amenity that programs tend to over-prioritize today, even though travelers rarely notice or use it?
Hakim: WiFi. It sounds funny, but it is the cleanest example we have. 15 years ago, WiFi was a perk worth specifying in a hotel rate description. Today it is standard at almost every business hotel.
The problem is that distribution systems still hold rate descriptions from years ago. So when a strict policy requires WiFi to be explicitly listed, the engine has to skip a lot of perfectly valid rates that simply do not mention it anymore. The amenity has not gone away. The description just has not caught up.
When programs revisit those outdated amenity rules, there is meaningful upside available on rooms that already meet every actual requirement of the program.
Sam: A lot of people who are new to reshop want to play it safe at first. They want to capture savings without changing anything about the original booking. That instinct makes complete sense, and reshop still delivers solid results in that mode. But the data tends to show there is more value available when a program is open to small, targeted refinements. How do you advise customers in that situation?
Hakim: We never push anyone. Our approach is to start in a stricter setup to generate data on traveler behavior. From there, the monitoring data does the talking.
We can show a travel professional exactly what a single, targeted change to one setting could yield, along with what the traveler experience looks like in those cases. What surprises a lot of people is how a small policy adjustment can deliver outsized results. A meaningful share of those rebookings actually come with a better stay for the traveler than the original booking. There is real data behind that, and it is one of the more counterintuitive parts of the conversation we plan to explore at the webinar.
Join us at the webinar
Sam and Hakim will go much deeper at the upcoming BTN webinar on June 16th at 8am PDT / 11am EDT / 4pm BST / 5pm CEST alongside Nicole Del Sesto, Senior Manager, Global Travel at Applied Materials, and Holli Gribble, Senior Director of Revenue Optimization and Special Projects at World Travel Knoxville, a BCD Travel company.
The panel will share the behavioral booking data behind which policy rules cap savings hardest, the metrics that turn reshop into a strategic QBR conversation, and one piece of advice every travel manager and TMC can act on Monday morning.
Register for the webinar here.