After decades of frustration with opaque processes and delayed payments, luxury hotels finally have a credible alternative to the way commission payments have historically been done.
SION, which has been solely a commission tracking platform, is now going upstream. With the launch of its supplier-facing product, SION for Suppliers, hotels and DMCs can now automate, verify, and pay advisor commissions with transparency baked in.
That is the whole point, according to SION CEO Irving Betesh.
“Everyone thinks this is a payments problem,” Betesh said in an interview with Luxury Travel Advisor. “But it’s not. It’s a data problem masquerading as a payments problem. And the only way to solve it is by aligning the information between supplier and agency, in real time.”
A Decade in the Making
SION didn’t start as a software-as-a-service, or SaaS, tool. It started as a gripe.
Back in 2013, Betesh quit a lucrative sales job in fashion to enter the travel world as a travel advisor. He had so much success in his first year that by the end of it he was already named to Travel Agent magazine’s 30 under 30.
But the moment of reckoning came when his commissions didn’t show up. Not because they weren’t earned, but because there was no clean, verifiable record of when or how they were due.
“I went to my host agency’s office and had to dig through manila folders,” he recalled. “It was chaos.”
Together with cofounders Alfons Musry and Mark Nauroth, Betesh explored whether the travel industry could borrow a page from a concept called factoring, or the wholesale model where receivables are paid upfront by a third party in the fashion industry.
However, then came a clear and daunting realization: Without shared data, no model would work.
So Betesh set out to build one side of the equation first: a commission tracking platform for agencies. SION now supports over 8,000 users, including many from top consortia like Virtuoso. On Host Agency Reviews (HAR), it holds “first-class” status and has received unanimous five-star ratings from advisors.
But the endgame was always supplier-side.
What the New System Does
SION for Suppliers, rolling out in August with 24 signed beta hotels and many more hotels in the pipeline, is simple on the surface but transformative under the hood. In a nutshell, it allows hotels to take advantage of several features:
- Pay advisor commissions within 1-2 business days of receiving funds.
- Pre-load rules for rate codes, partner tiers, and reconciliation processes.
- View transparent foreign exchange (FX) rates powered by Airwallex, with clearly displayed markups on transactions.
- Pay agencies without the agencies incurring any fees. (SION charges no agency-side fees.)
- Operate on flexible schedules. Hotels can pay weekly, monthly, or even daily, if they want to stand out like Stuart Procter and the Beaumont Mayfair.
Unlike other systems that focus on moving money, SION treats commission processing as a problem between booking systems. While it takes a little work for hotels to set things up on the front end (the first version requires hotels to upload PMS files manually), full PMS integration starting with Opera Cloud is expected in Q1 2026, with further expansion and enhancements planned thereafter.
Rocco Forte Hotels is the first hotel group to embrace this transformation.
"Partnering with Sion allows us to streamline commission payments, ensuring our agents are paid faster and with complete transparency," said Jan Arnold, Senior Vice President of Sales. "The Travel Community plays an integral role in Rocco Forte’s commercial success story...when Travel Agents are happy, they book more, and that benefits everyone."
SION has garnered additional support from the likes of Queen of Clubs Lifestyle Luxury Services, SHA, as well as a number of other major hotel brands, DMCs, and large, high-powered travel agencies.
What makes this system different, Betesh argues, is that it treats the supplier as the paying customer without penalizing agencies, the recipients.
That’s in stark contrast to legacy platforms like Onyx, which charge hotels minimal transaction fees but extract hefty markups on the agency side, plus additional fees for tools like SurePay or RecoverPro.
“It’s insane,” said Betesh. “The hotel pays what they owe and the agency pays to receive it. No one knows where the money is until it shows up weeks later. Agencies shouldn’t pay for what they’ve earned.”
By contrast, SION’s system shows both sides exactly what was paid, in what currency, and at what rate. Every step is visible.
The system is focused on boutique luxury hotels and smaller DMCs, many of whom are either using no system at all or struggling with dated infrastructure. Additional supplier contracts are in the pipeline, and Betesh expects the first commissions to be disbursed before Virtuoso Travel Week in mid-August.
When asked about competitors, Betesh was diplomatic but clear: “Other services might be trying to muscle in from other verticals, but we’re built by this industry, for this industry. We understand the problem we’re solving.”
Indeed, the product roadmap hints at something bigger than a plug-and-play payout engine.
SION aims to automate statement generation based on preloaded business rules, and they’ve already done it on the agency side.
Now the plan is to do the same for hotels, which means hotels and agencies will be looking at the same data.
On the Horizon
For years, advisors have complained about the inefficiency and opaqueness of commission systems. Hotels, in turn, have wasted time fielding payment inquiries they thought were resolved. The result has been strained relationships, accounting headaches, and billions in lost productivity.
SION’s supplier product doesn’t promise a miracle, but it does offer something rare in this space: clarity.
“We’re not here to be everything to everyone,” said Betesh. “We’re here to solve commissions. And we want to solve them right.”
Jacques Ledbetter is a Luxury Travel Advisor contributor and founder of The Luxe Ledger newsletter. Join the conversation when this story posts there tomorrow on LinkedIn.
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