The Modern Hotelier #173: Simplifying Payments Between Hotels & Travel Agents | with Noelani Schroy
===
Steve Carran: Welcome to another episode of The Modern Hotelier. We are coming to you from the trade show floor at HITEC in Indianapolis, Indiana, and we are joined by Noelani Schroy, the VP of Global Territory Sales at Onyx. Noelani, thanks for sitting down with us. How are you today? 
Noelani Schroy: Thank you so much for having me. I'm great. I'm good. It's early in the trade show, so I still have lots of energy. 
Steve Carran: Yes, it's great. One of our first interview here actually, so. Congratulations. 
Noelani Schroy: Thank you. 
Steve Carran: Noe, how many HITEC’s have you been to, roughly? I don't know if you know the exact number. 
Noelani Schroy: I was talking with someone about this, it's around 10 at this point, somewhere in there. Give or take. 
Steve Carran: What makes HITEC unique and why do you keep coming back? 
Noelani Schroy: I get so excited every year to come back to HITEC. It's constantly just a group of people trying to solve hospitality problems and having fun doing it. I mean, this industry is the most fun industry, and this is at one time a year, we all get together. Yeah, you kind of kick back a little bit 'cause it can be stressful. Yeah, it can be stressful. But being with all of our clients, all of our partnersVit is just the place to be every year. 
Steve Carran: And it's almost like a class reunion. I feel like it's, it is like we were driving in an Uber, a dysfunctional family reunion.
Noelani Schroy: Absolutely. Yeah. 
Steve Carran: . That's a better way to put it. But we were driving down this road and it's like, oh, there's X, Y, Z. Oh. Mm-hmm. Oh, oh. And it's like you see everybody Yes. Getting together once a year. It's a great time. Absolutely. Absolutely. 
David M.: So those who aren't familiar with Onyx, can you just give an overview of what Onyx does and kind of just how it originated?
Noelani Schroy: Yeah, sure. Absolutely. So, I'll give a quick history. Started off on the hotel side. So hotels have a problem. Commission payments are difficult, they shouldn't be this difficult, how do we fix it? So, got together and put together Onyx. And with that, they're able to simplify their commission process rather than having to cut a bunch of different checks. Make everything more simple. So as we've evolved, we now help also the travel agency side. So both hotels and travel agents use us to simplify the commission B2B payment solution. 
Steve Carran: That's great. And I wanna dive a little deeper on that. Sure. Like you said, I feel like commission should be a little bit more of a simple process.
Noelani Schroy: It should be but it's not right.
Steve Carran: And how are you helping make that process more simple? 
Noelani Schroy: So it really feels like something that should be, like you said, simple and it's so complicated for hotels and you think about all of the things that are happening on the hotel side and in the accounting and in the sales team wanting to make sure that we're happy, happy travel agents and happy customers.
As the guests are coming in and they're checking out, there's this very tedious process of truing up what was booked, what actualized, and then who it is that we pay what to. And with that, a lot of times payments just get lost. And with, and in, in that whole process, you have upset travel agents and the sales team has worked so hard to just make a good relationship there.
And then it all gets lost in what we call like the final handshake. So what we're able to do is, you know, hotels, just send us your data and then once a week we'll let you know you owe a total of $5,000 in commission payments. Send that to us. We'll go ahead and make sure each travel agent gets paid the correct amount. There's currency conversions, international financial laws, all of those pieces. We'll take care of the noise. You manage the guests. Wow. 
David M.: And so how is, so keep going down that road, how is Onyx really making an impact in hospitality and with hotel use? 
Noelani Schroy: Travel agents, so it, we hear a lot of times hotels struggling with we wanna move from OTA to direct and I think we all can agree at this point that there's a place for OTA, we all want direct, but there's also something in the middle and that's where that travel agent, we're seeing a really strong focus right now on how do we get more travel agency business? And it's a lot of, you know, knocking on doors and picking up phones. But then how do we retain it? Right? We always wanna be able to retain the business. If you're always just having to capture a new business, that's not a very scalable, uh, business. So we are in there to help maintain that relationship 'cause at the end of the day, the travel agents want their money. They want it quickly and they want it accurately. And so we're able to facilitate that. So again, those relationship pieces, the hotel can focus on that. That's what hoteliers do so, so well. Um, and, uh, we'll just take care of the other parts.
Steve Carran: So is there any announcements or anything new that you're talking about here at HITEC? 
Noelani Schroy: Well, we've been around for like 30 years now. Okay. That's a really long time. And you think about 30 years of data. Is extraordinary. And so in the background, we've been consuming all of this data and understanding what's going on in hotels as well as travel agency world.
And now we're looking at how can we use this to better the industry on both sides. And so we have a new product that we've actually recently rolled out called Onyx Insights, and it's one more piece of data, which is true, but this is going to be very niche and specific to that travel agency business, helping hotels, again, grow that business that they are so focused on right now. Being able to understand better. How to nurture it. How to grow it. 
David M.: That's great. So HITEC’s underway, let people know how they can find out more about Onyx, how they can get in touch with you. So let us know, please. 
Noelani Schroy: Sure thing. So onyxcentersource.com. And of course you can always do sales@onyxcentersource.com if you want to get in touch with us. 
David M.: Thank you so much. Have a great show. 
Noelani Schroy: It's my pleasure. Thanks guys.
David M.: Thanks Noelani.