Meet our TeamX: interview to Danny Dimitrov

“The push connectivities provide our clients with faster response times in availability, valuation, and reservation”

Danny Dimitrov works as a Customer Success Manager at TravelgateX and part of his job is to act as the link between the clients working with our push connectivities and the Purchasing product team, ensuring the Product Manager receives clients’ feedback and compiling product improvement suggestions. He also supports the Sales & the Success Teams by performing demos of our Extranet to both existing clients and possible ones.

Danny has been working in TravelgateX for almost two years, starting in Customer Care and recently moving to the Success team. “I work daily with eight excellent colleagues, who have been super helpful and welcoming. We form a really incredible team”, explains Danny.

Keep reading to find out what Danny thinks about working at TravelgateX, the importance of connectivity, the difference between pull and push suppliers and much more.

Danny, What do you do at TravelgateX?

I work closely with the clients assigned to me, helping them make the most of their connectivities with us. Here at TGX, each Customer Success Manager specializes in a product, and I’m the Product Specialist for our PUSH connectivities.

This means I work very closely with all clients using our PUSH API as well as with our Purchasing team, making sure that feedback, changes and improvements are first and foremost coordinated between everyone and everyone is happy with the end result.

Part of my job is to help our clients navigate and use our PUSH extranet to its full extent, which is why I am the person who guides them in their first steps in using the extranet and providing them with demos, live, either via calls or in person.

This is especially important as our PUSH extranet and the inventory are crucial parts in a push connection. Our inventory permits our clients to not only setup the hotel contract the way the hotelier has provided it, they are also able to load any offers, restrictions, cancellation policies and much more; information which the channel manager might not always be able to load.

You talk about products a lot, what are the different products offered by TravelgateX?

We have Hotel-X (our aggregating API), all its plugins, our pull connectivities, Speed (our smart cache solution), Payments-X, Mappea, Inventory, Distribute-X (business rule engine) and our push connectivities.

What is the difference between a push and a pull supplier?

The difference between pull and push suppliers is in the way the product is delivered to us. There is no difference in the way we return results to our clients. What I mean by this is that in a pull connectivity the process we follow is our client makes a request, we send this request to the supplier and then return the supplier’s response to our client.

This way we call the supplier’s API and pass their response translated to the client’s system. The push connectivities are different but quite simple, providing our clients with faster response times in Availability, Valuation and Reservation.

The way they work and allow for faster response times is by having the channel managers load their product directly into our system, which saves a lot of time at availability search step. When the product is loaded by the channel into our system, this allows us to return to the clients faster compared to a pull connectivity, as we do not have to call the supplier’s API and do not have to wait for a response from them.

What are the advantages of a push connection over a pull?

Another useful feature of the push connectivities is the ability to see availability up to 2 years ahead in a calendar tool inside our user-friendly push extranet. This extranet also provides you with the ability to see what the channel manager has loaded at any point.

How can a TGX client connect to a channel manager such as Siteminder?

Connecting to a channel manager is as simple and quick as it is to connect to a pull supplier. Once you have a commercial agreement either with the channel manager or the hotel that you will be working with (some channel managers require commercial agreements and some do not.

In the latter, you would need to have a contract with the hotel though) and request the activation in our activation portal. When the product is loaded by the channel into our system, this allows us to return a response to the clients faster compared to pull connectivity, as we do not have to call the supplier’s API and do not have to wait for a response from them.

What have you learned in the experiences with your clients?

Working in such a great environment as the one in TravelgateX and having spoken with our clients directly since I got here I have learned that it is very important for us to get to know our clients when working together with them in improving their connectivities.

Having that close relationship with clients is what allows for a free-flowing conversation and helps us and the clients feel more comfortable in discussing their goals and the steps that need to be taken to reach them.