Überlingen – Letting go of the old and daring to try something new: innovative medium-sized companies such as Berlin-based ehotel AG are not afraid of change but see it as an opportunity. The company made an excellent impression during the 27th round of the TOP 100 awards for Germany’s most innovative SMEs. ehotel® will officially be among the TOP 100 from 19th June. The company made a strong impression in the scientific selection process in size class A (up to 50 employees) across all evaluation categories, with above-average scores. For the fourth time, ehotel® has landed among the top innovators and even ranks third in its size class.
The TOP 100 company sees itself not only as a hotel booking platform, but also as a service provider and market observer. For its customers – firms that send their employees on business trips – is ehotel® a one stop shop solution provider. This saves customers a lot of time. „We’re basically a technology company. The services we offer streamline our customers‘ administrative processes,“ notes Fritz Zerweck, member of the board of directors.
All employees are entitled to make suggestions for improvement whenever they wish. „Digitalisation is changing work and job profiles. Innovations are crucial for survival in our industry,“ emphasises Zerweck. That’s why they hold regular idea pool meetings where employees can contribute their ideas.
However, many innovations are also the result of our customer feedback loop. For example, they pointed out that traditional hotel portals do not immediately display the cheapest offers. „This is why we developed software that consolidates the offers from various hotel portals,“ reports Zerweck. „Central billing“ is another important service tool used by the Berlin-based company. The four-time top innovator integrates this software into its clients‘ systems, thus saving them valuable time when it comes to travel expense accounting.
The TOP 100 competition
Compamedia has been awarding its TOP 100 seal of approval for special innovative strength and above-average innovation success, to medium-sized companies since 1993. The scientific direction has been in the hands of Professor Dr Nikolaus Franke since 2002. Franke is the founder and director of the Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Vienna University of Economics and Business. The mentor of the TOP 100 competition is science journalist Ranga Yogeshwar. Project partners are the Fraunhofer Society for the Promotion of Applied Research and the BVMW (the German Association for Small and Medium Sized Businesses). As media partners, Manager Magazin, Impulse and W&V provide support for the comparison of companies. More information is available at www.top100.de
The ehotel® hotel booking platform bundles the accommodation offerings of all providers worldwide on one platform through META-SEARCH technology. The Berlin-based company is focusing its business on holistic support of hotel bookings and the associated services for business customers. By integrating tools and services into the systems of the companies in question and through specially developed payment and billing solutions, ehotel® ensures optimised processes, end-to-end expenditure control, compliance and cost savings for the customer. The booking platform has been repeatedly recognised for its quality of service by the German Institute for Service Quality and the market research institute ServiceValue among others. www.ehotelag.com
Keywords:Top100, Top Innovator, hotel booking platform, Award, Innovation, Hotels, ehotel