Bilt is making a significant push into travel advisor technology with the launch of Bilt OS for Hospitality, a new operating system designed to bring many of the disparate tools advisors use into a single platform.
The platform combines hotel and air booking, an interactive itinerary builder, commission tracking through Sion, client management tools and an “agentic concierge” designed to provide clients with around-the-clock support while keeping the travel advisor at the center of the relationship. It was announced Sunday at the Virtuoso Travel Week Tech Summit.
Advisors and agencies will pay a monthly software subscription plus what Richard Kerr, Bilt's general manager of travel, described as "a small per-PNR fee." The company has not finalized pricing and is still discussing the model with its advisory board. Bilt will not take a commission and has no plans to, Kerr told Luxury Travel Advisor.
“We want nothing to do with splitting commissions or having any part of that business,” Kerr said. “Everybody’s money is their money, not ours.”
Each advisor will continue to use their own individual IATA code and existing rates that they have negotiated with hotels and other travel providers. Bilt does not want to be involved with providing any rates, Kerr said, and this platform would sit aside from Bilt’s own “Home Away From Home” hotel collection.
Bilt started as a loyalty program tied to apartment rentals but has grown into a membership program for neighborhood retailers and restaurants as well as a co-branded credit card. As it grew, it created a technology layer that sits on top of legacy technology stacks and lets everything talk together. This new advisor operating system is the new evolution of that technology.
“We’ve gotten really good at being this orchestration layer,” Kerr said. “And as we spent a lot of time with luxury travel advisors over the last year after we launched our Home Away From Home program, we realized this wasn’t much of a different model.”
Bilt knows where members live, where they shop and dine locally, what travel they book and — for some members — what their credit card spending is like. Travel is Bilt's number two redemption category, only surpassed by using points toward rent payments. But, for now, Kerr says that consumer data will be separate from the advisor operating system and not shared.
Kerr said Bilt noticed an industry producing billions of dollars in luxury travel sales while still relying on a patchwork of email, spreadsheets, supplier websites, GDS tools and other systems that do not necessarily communicate with one another.
“We chose to work with Bilt on developing this offering because from day one, they were ready to listen and engage with us as the subject matter experts,” Eitan Geft, president of Cadence Travel said in prepared remarks. “That’s rare in this space. The result is a platform being built by advisors, with advisors, for advisors, and that gets us truly excited.”
The goal with Bilt OS is to give advisors one place from which to manage more of that workflow.
An advisor searching for a hotel in London, for example, could search across inventory without separately opening Marriott, Accor, Virtuoso and Sabre interfaces, Kerr said. Agencies will not, however, have to abandon the systems they already use.
“It’ll really be up to each agency and each advisor which parts of the operating system they want to start with,” Kerr said.
Some might use only the booking platform. Others could move more of their operations into Bilt OS, including commission reconciliation through Sion, which Bilt acquired in March for $30 million, or connect existing customer management platforms such as Salesforce or HubSpot.
Sion sits at a point of friction Luxury Travel Advisor has covered before, having emerged as the first credible challenger to Onyx CenterSource's long-standing hold on hotel commission payments. Kerr said Sion works with the global suppliers that pay commissions through Onyx, along with other channels agencies use to get paid.
"The Sion acquisition has been great. Customer retention is 100 percent because of it and people are excited," Kerr said. "It's really about the two cofounders that everyone in the industry loves. And now they have the resources to build the next gen of Sion that they have been waiting to build.”
That distinction is likely to matter to advisors concerned about a technology company potentially inserting itself between them and their host agencies, consortia or clients. Kerr repeatedly stressed that Bilt is positioning itself as a technology provider, not as a host agency.
Bookings made through the platform will continue to be attributed to the agency’s own IATA number and PCC, and the rates and amenities displayed will depend on the agreements already available to that agency.
Bilt is initially integrating with Sabre. For air, the first version is aimed primarily at advisors and agencies that do not already have sophisticated ticketing operations. Advisors without existing air capabilities will be able to access NDC connections and Sabre inventory through the platform.
Kerr said Bilt is deliberately not attempting, at least initially, to replace the established air desks of large agencies. Those agencies will still be able to add externally booked flights to a client itinerary. In fact, Bilt says almost anything booked outside the platform — including hotels booked by phone, dining and activities — can be uploaded and incorporated into an itinerary.
A car marketplace is planned for the fall, while cruise booking will take longer. Kerr said cruise inventory may be accessible through APIs, but Bilt still needs to build a front-end experience it believes is good enough for advisors.
"What drew us in, in part, was that Bilt didn't come with a predetermined solution," Lianna Guttzeit, Executive Director of SmartFlyer said in a news release. "They came in with questions. They wanted to understand how travel advisors actually work, what challenges we face, and what would create meaningful value for our businesses. That collaborative approach is helping build a platform that reflects the realities of our industry and has the potential to move it forward."
Another component is Bilt Wallet, which will allow clients to store payment methods and authorize advisors to make approved purchases without relying on physical credit-card authorization forms. Those cards are not limited to Bilt’s cobrand card but any existing card a client has.
Kerr was also careful to draw a line between Bilt’s consumer rewards business and its new advisor platform. The consumer and advisor databases will be separate in the first version, he said, and Bilt points will not initially be integrated into the advisor experience. Client information will not be sold to suppliers, Kerr said. However, Bilt will provide anonymized lookalike audiences to advisors to help target marketing and drive new business.
Bilt developed the platform with an advisory board drawn from the travel industry, and those agencies will serve as the first beta testers. Additional advisors will initially join through a waitlist as Bilt tests the product with agencies of different sizes and specialties.
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