Get to know the SilverDoor Online Booking Tool
In today’s digital landscape, consumers are always just a few clicks away from their next purchase. Despite this, booking accommodation for business travel and relocation has always called for a human-to-human, offline service. Arranging accommodation, particularly for extended stays, is a deeply personal process, one that requires the level of care and sensitivity that only a human expert at the end of the phone can provide.
While this is certainly the case, we’re still seeing huge demand for the option of a quick and convenient online booking process for corporate housing. Both from individual business travellers, who are clear on what they want from a stay and have no need to consult with a booking team, and from those in travel leader positions looking for a comprehensive platform to easily manage large scale travel programmes. SilverDoor recognised this need and built our Online Booking Tool to meet it.
The SilverDoor online booking tool (OBT) is a powerful all-in-one programme management platform where bookers can browse apartment options, compare properties and live rates, and make instant reservations. From a business perspective, travel managers can use the tool to track and manage programme performance and set objectives using detailed, high-level analytics dashboards.
The platform was built with a distinct goal in mind: to deliver the autonomy and instant live booking technology travellers want, with the service, safety, and certainty businesses need. The tool streamlines the booking process by gathering all accommodation options and reservation information into one place and digitises the coordinated management of a full accommodation programme.
The SilverDoor OBT spearheads online booking in the serviced apartment space, trusted by some of the world’s largest financial and professional services firms, currently adding value to the accommodation programmes of more than 55 global companies.
The Evolution of the SilverDoor Online Booking Tool
The official origins of our online booking tool date back to 2018. From our clients, we had long been seeing increased demand for the option of instant online booking capability, but as an industry there had historically been a lack of maturity in the technological advancements of the serviced apartment sector compared with that of hotels.
All recognising a gap in the industry for a unified digital solution to the management of large-scale travel programmes, we set our sights on becoming the first in the sector to market with our online booking tool.
We began laying the foundations of the tool in early 2018 with a deep analysis of client requirements and competitor technologies. This year also saw us develop early prototypes and explore future proof technologies in key areas of scalability, performance and compliance. By November 2018, we had made the first prototype live.
2019 marked the launch of API-powered integrations with other platforms such as duty of care solutions, fintech and expense management solutions, as well as other agents’ inventories. We then undertook a rigorous client feedback process, refining the platform with ongoing testing and fixes. By the summer, we had added new features including seasonal budgeting with a 10% over-budget buffer option.
In 2020, the global travel landscape was changed in ways nobody expected. The COVID-19 pandemic put a stop to non-essential travel, so our focus shifted away from developing the OBT and the priority went to supporting those essential trips and relocations, which naturally required offline, human support as a beacon amongst all the uncertainty. COVID saw us reduce investment in the OBT, but when travel began to pick back up, as did our attention to the tool.
Leveraging our relationships with some of the world’s leading companies, as well as our collective of 2,400 property operators, has been pivotal to our enhancement of the tool. Ensuring an open dialogue throughout our network we were not only able to establish a strong understanding of our client’s non-negotiables, but also empowered to anticipate their future needs, addressing these with intuitive additional features we knew our users would value most. One example was the introduction of single-sign-on (SSO) in 2022, enabling our users to log directly into Orbi from their own internal travel portals using a single set of credentials.
The release of our Carbon Calculator in September 2023 prompted the introduction of carbon emissions data to the tool. Since then, we have turned our attention to expanding our live inventory and growing the number of clients using the OBT.
The SilverDoor Online Booking Tool was the first of its kind in the sector, and since its release what has never wavered has been a desire to stay innovative. In March 2024, we launched our newly optimised OBT, integrating it into our website and officially rebranding it as the SilverDoor Online Booking Tool. This was not with the intention of it being a finalised product, but with the mindset that this new tool would grow and develop as it was founded, together with clients through extensive, ongoing consultation.
From Feedback to Features: How our Clients Have Shaped the Tool
“Our most valuable innovations are inspired directly by our users. Every onboarding session is a chance to listen, learn, and refine the OBT into a smarter platform.
Demonstration sessions spark ideas that lead to impactful, client-centric enhancements to the OBT. Thanks to recent client feedback, we’ve implemented a number of improvements aimed at boosting functionality and streamlining the user experience when searching and booking online:
A refreshed layout and modernised design of the search results page
Clearer information display, including the latest cancellation date display
Improved map functionality, search filters, and results navigation
A simplified booking form that speeds up the reservation process
By staying closely connected to our users, we ensure that every update brings real value to the people using the tool.”
Iuliana Ioana, Client Programme Executive
Inside the SilverDoor OBT - Key Features that Set the Tool Apart
Tailored to your organisation:
We understand that every business will use an online booking tool in a slightly different way, each having different approval processes, compliance workflows and objectives for their programme management. The tool’s interface and user experience can be customised in several ways, including:
- Customisable homepage dashboard so users only see the functionality they need.
- Pre-loaded office locations to help bookers see accommodation nearby.
- Pre-loaded rate caps and budgets.
We want the SilverDoor OBT to integrate seamlessly with clients’ existing processes and platforms, so there are many examples of business- or programme-specific customisations supported by the tool. During the demo and onboarding stages we work with each customer to discover their unique requirements and customise the tool accordingly.
Built with Policy in Mind:
In a similar vein to personalisation, the SilverDoor OBT is built and developed with travel policy compliance front and centre. Companies can customise the platform to reflect their internal policies through a range of features:
- The platform is governed by extensive user permissions. These can be applied holistically, throughout the entire organisation, but can also be engineered at the individual level through the user groups function.
- The user groups function ensures each account can be set up with varying user permissions levels. Travel managers hold admin accounts to manage budgets and view analytics, whereas general employees have user accounts to simply make and view reservations.
- Preferred properties, those that best match location and budget preferences, among other policy parameters, can be prioritised by admin accounts to ensure they are the first to appear when a user makes a search on the tool.
- Duty of care considerations and obligations have prompted key updates, such as introducing prohibited properties on our search feature: properties that don’t comply with your travel policy will be prohibited from showing on the search results page.
- This extends to high-risk locations which can be blocked or restricted to require approval when staff want to book in certain countries, all to place traveller safety at the tool’s forefront.
Smarter Cost Savings and Budget Management:
Consolidating the costs of large-scale bookings from individuals across varying accommodation types has long proven a challenge for travel managers. That’s why the SilverDoor OBT offers powerful features to support cost savings and budget management.
- Accounts can be set up with budgets and spend caps that can be altered by season or location, or can be used as a general cap.
- Each user group can be set up with a user-specific budget, unique to their seniority, type of travel, or reason for travel.
- The OBT provides access to negotiated online rates to help maximise value, with budget-compliant options prioritised in the search results.
- Real-time reporting dashboards give travel managers full visibility into their cost data, providing detailed insights on cost savings, rate comparisons, waived fees and negotiated rate caps, all in one place.
Seamlessly Connected with Popular Third-Party Travel Platforms:
The SilverDoor OBT connects with platforms many of our clients already use, from expense tools like SAP Concur to safety services such as Everbridge and International SOS. We’ve also built in functionality with payment providers to make card payments available on the tool, streamlining the booking process right the way up until the final step.
Full Visibility into your Travel Data:
The SilverDoor OBT acts as a right hand in simplifying and organising your travel data, so you’re never tracking it down from multiple sources. The analytics module gives travel managers a clearer view of what’s happening within their programme: not only providing oversight on who’s travelling, where, and when, but also a live breakdown of reservation data, spend and savings. The dashboards support seamless report generation for exportable insights to share with your stakeholders and demonstrate performance.
Beyond tracking your own spend and booking data, the tool also enables you to track how SilverDoor are performing against service level KPIs, like response times and issue resolution. Just like in our offline account management, the OBT champions transparency with honest performance tracking and ensures continuous improvement.
Protecting you and your Data:
Just as you have a duty of care to your staff, we have a duty of care to protect both you and your data. We work with several clients who operate in highly regulated industries, such as global banks and other financial services companies. They have extremely stringent data security requirements for all their suppliers, and especially those who handle the personal data of their people, and their families. This has given us the opportunity to develop comprehensive, regularly audited policies in these areas. We employ a full-time Information Security Manager who oversees and updates these policies to ensure they are market-leading and offer our clients the highest possible standards of security. You can view our data security and data protection accreditations here.
The Road Ahead: Future Innovations for the tool:
“The OBT is more than just a booking platform—it's an evolving, bespoke solution built around the needs of our clients. As we continue to grow and develop it, our focus remains on innovation and delivering a seamless user experience.
With each update, we’re introducing smarter functionality to simplify workflows and boost efficiency. We're actively expanding our live rate connectivity with property partners, enabling greater visibility of real-time availability and pricing across a growing number of global destinations.
Looking ahead, one of our goals is for the OBT to become more proactive in enforcing company travel policies. New features will support more personalised travel policies, including a refined approval process when a booking request falls outside company policy —ensuring compliance without compromising user experience.
We’re excited about what’s coming next and we’d love to show you where the OBT is heading. If you haven’t already, book a demo with us to explore how the tool can support your travel programme today and in the future.”
Iuliana Ioana, Client Programme Executive
