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	Since 2010 Hotelbeds has successfully replaced holiday season ‘corporate gifts’ with a digital greeting that represents a charity donation.
	Funds raised this year go to the World Wildlife Foundation (WWF), for its fight to support climate change action.
	In total around €7,500 have been donated and will be earmarked to support WWF goals.
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Palma, Spain, 28th January 2020 – Hotelbeds , the world’s leading bedbank, has announced today that the money raised through its policy of replacing holiday season corporate gifts with a charity donation will this year go to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), an international non-governmental organization dedicated to preserving the wilderness.

As part of the initiative, for each digital Christmas card sent by Hotelbeds to its partners around the globe the company donates 20 euros to the WWF. Thus far in total €7,500 have been donated over the holiday season to support this important cause.

WWF is the world's largest conservation organization with over five million supporters worldwide, working in more than 100 countries, supporting around 1,300 conservation and environmental projects. WWF aims to stop the degradation of the planet's natural environment and to build a future in which humans live in harmony with nature. Its current work is organized around six areas: food, climate, freshwater, wildlife, forests, and oceans.

Teresa Laso, Head of Corporate Sustainability at Hotelbeds, explained: “As we all know, there is no Planet B, and climate change is now affecting every country on every continent. For this reason, this year we have taken action to stop climate change from getting worse through our partnership with the WWF.

“With the funds that we would have spent on holiday season gifts for partners we are instead supporting the WWF goals for protecting and conserving the world’s forests.

“As a leading company in the B2B travel sector, with many employees around the globe, we have a great responsibility to raise awareness about important issues and promote good practices amongst our employees.”

Since 2010 Hotelbeds has been making donations for Christmas instead of purchasing corporate gifts. In previous years the donations have been aimed at other charities and humanitarian agencies, such as Le Passage Travel Foundation in India, UNHCR and Care International.

This initiative is aligned with the Corporate Social Responsibility approach of Hotelbeds and the company’s commitment to make a positive impact on its local communities.

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About Hotelbeds 

Hotelbeds is the world’s leading bedbank.

In a fragmented and complex travel landscape, Hotelbeds provides over 180,000 hotels across the globe with access to high-value, complementary distribution channels that significantly increase occupancy rates and optimise RevPAR – whilst not competing with the hotelier’s direct distribution strategy.

Hotelbeds does this by offering hoteliers access to a network of over 60,000 hard-to-access B2B travel buyers such as tour operators, retail travel agents, airline websites, and loyalty schemes in over 140 source markets worldwide. These channels provide hotel partners with returning guests that book further in advance, cancel less, spend more in-destination and stay longer.

In addition to accommodation, Hotelbeds is also the world’s largest B2B seller of travel ancillaries, offering 24,000 transfer routes and 18,000 activities, as well as attractions, tickets and car hire. Operating under the ‘Beyond the Bed’ product line, it provides both hoteliers and travel distribution partners with an efficient platform and powerful tools to easily integrate and commercialise its leading portfolio of high-margin products.

The company is headquartered in Palma, Spain and employs around 5,000 employees across over 60 offices globally.&nbsp;

Follow us on:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hotelbeds-group

Twitter: @Hotelbeds

Facebook: Hotelbeds

Instagram: @hotelbeds_official

&nbsp;

Hotelbeds Group Media 

PR, Media Relations &amp; Corporate Affairs

Antonia Aguiló – a.aguilo@hotelbeds.com

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Hotelbeds replaces holiday season corporate gifts with World Wildlife Fund donation


	Top ten international destinations for Chinese travellers during Chinese New Year are, in descending order, Thailand, Japan, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia, the US, Philippines, Spain, and Italy. *
	Trend for Chinese travellers visiting a wider range of countries continues, with hotels in 104 countries reserved, up from 102 last year and 88 in 2018. *
	China is the fourth biggest source market globally for Hotelbeds providing high-value, long-haul guests to many of the company’s 180,000 hotel property partners worldwide.
	Hotelbeds sources China-ready accommodation around the globe and advises hoteliers on how to better attract Chinese travellers.


Shanghai, China – January 20, 2020 – Hotelbeds , the world´s leading bedbank, has today revealed the top international destinations for Chinese travellers during the seven day Chinese New Year holiday period starting on Friday 24th January.

According to Hotelbeds’ booking for this year’s break, Thailand is the most popular destination, with Japan and Singapore ranking second and thirdly respectively for two consecutive years. These are followed, in descending order, by Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia, the US, Philippines, Spain, and Italy in tenth place.

Whilst it is noteworthy that Vietnam and South Korea have this year dropped out of the top ten countries, replaced by Spain and Italy respectively, nonetheless the two remain popular with Chinese tourists and come in at eleventh and fifteenth place this year.

Additionally, it should be noted that a trend for Chinese travellers visiting a wider range of countries continues, with Chinese travellers booking hotels through the Hotelbeds bedbank to travel 104 countries for the Chinese New Year holiday period, up from 102 last year and only 88 in 2018.

China remains the 4th biggest source market for Hotelbeds globally and the company offers Chinese travel intermediaries – such as tour operators, airlines, points redemption schemes, and retail travel agents – access to over 180,000 hotels, 24,000 transfer routes and 18,000 activities, available in over 185 countries.

Meanwhile Hotelbeds’ 180,000 hotel property partners worldwide benefit from gaining access to Chinese guests, many of whom are highly valued by hoteliers in Europe and North America.

Hotelbeds works closely with hoteliers around the world to source China-ready hotel product and additionally to advise hotels on how to better attract Chinese travellers, not just in terms of food and language, but also relating to payments, booking processes and technology.

Forrest Zhang, Managing Director China, Hotelbeds, said, “I am very excited to be able to confirm a dramatic shift in how people are travelling during this holiday vs. recent years. Everyone knows that travel demand surges massively during the Chinese New Year, but traditionally this holiday has been spent at home with family in China – and now we are seeing more and more Chinese people travel not just abroad, but to a more distant and wider range of destinations.

“Sourcing China-ready hotel product around the world and offering a wide range of accommodation products, plus in destination activities, has been our strategy for growth in China, which has successfully taken in not only popular international destinations but also those lesser-known destinations that Chinese travellers are now starting to explore. Together with my team, we would like to wish our customers in China a happy new year! Let’s make it another successful year together. ”

The Chinese New Year holiday, also known as Spring Festival, is a seven-day national holiday in China that takes place from Friday January 24th to Thursday January 30th. The date of the Chinese New Year varies each year, according to China’s lunar calendar, and last year started on 6th February.

Recently the China Outbound Tourism Research Institute (COTRI) predicted that in 2020, for the first time, more than seven million trips would be made across the border during the holiday, compared to about 6.5 million in 2018.

*All figures quoted in this press release are based on bookings made via Hotelbeds, including both the Hotelbeds wholesale and Bedsonline retail brands. 

&nbsp;

About Hotelbeds 

Hotelbeds is the world’s leading bedbank.

&nbsp;

In a fragmented and complex travel landscape, Hotelbeds provides over 180,000 hotels across the globe with access to high-value, complementary distribution channels that significantly increase occupancy rates and optimise RevPAR – whilst not competing with the hotelier’s direct distribution strategy.

&nbsp;

Hotelbeds does this by offering hoteliers access to a network of over 60,000 hard-to-access B2B travel buyers such as tour operators, retail travel agents, airline websites, and loyalty schemes in over 140 source markets worldwide. These channels provide hotel partners with returning guests that book further in advance, cancel less, spend more in-destination and stay longer.

&nbsp;

In addition to accommodation, Hotelbeds is also the world’s largest B2B seller of travel ancillaries, offering 24,000 transfer routes and 18,000 activities, as well as attractions, tickets and car hire. Operating under the ‘Beyond the Bed’ product line, it provides both hoteliers and travel distribution partners with an efficient platform and powerful tools to easily integrate and commercialise its leading portfolio of high-margin products.

&nbsp;

The company is headquartered in Palma, Spain and employs around 5,000 employees across over 60 offices globally.&nbsp;

Follow us on:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hotelbeds-group

Twitter: @Hotelbeds

Facebook: Hotelbeds

&nbsp;

&nbsp;

Hotelbeds Group Media 

Media Relations &amp; Corporate Affairs

Wei Wang · whitney.wang@hotelbeds.com


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Thailand, Japan, and Singapore top Hotelbeds’ Chinese New Year travel ranking

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	Hotelbeds is tackling rate integrity challenge by investing in automated technology and introduction of strict ‘three strikes’ policy for offending sellers.
	Survey reveals challenges hoteliers face in stopping online players selling discounted rates intended for packaging by tour operators and travel agents.
	Poll conducted during ‘Rate integrity: are bedbanks the problem or the solution?’ webinar, hosted by Hotelbeds with leading travel technology publication Phocuswire.
	Panelists from Barceló, On the Beach, and Rate Gain participated in webinar debate.


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Palma, Spain,&nbsp; 16th January 2020 – Hotelbeds, the world’s leading bedbank, has today published the results of an industry survey that reveals concerns about the challenge of managing the integrity of hotel room rates in the online environment.

The survey was conducted during a webinar – titled ‘Rate integrity: are bedbanks the problem or the solution?’ – hosted by Hotelbeds and organized by leading travel technology publication Phocuswire on Tuesday 3 December.

Participants confirmed as a ‘top priority’ the challenge of ensuring that opaque rates intended for channels such as tour operators or travel agents as part of packages are not unbundled and sold individually, with 85% scoring the issue as an 8, 9 or 10 (on a scale of 1-10) and only less than 4% rating the topic as a 5 or below.

However the survey showed that many in the industry are uncertain as to how to resolve the problem. Almost 70% felt ‘powerless to stop large OTAs discounting their prices’, around 50% said that they were ‘still reliant on such bookings’ (even though their prices are not respected), and only 25% take action against the seller when they discover an issue.

Additionally the results confirmed the biggest challenge for hoteliers: actually identifying when rate misuse occurs. Around 75% of respondents felt unable to reliably identify individual sales that misuse policies; and 68% responded that they don´t have technology solutions available to monitor the problem.

Paul Anthony, Global Sourcing Relations &amp; Commercial Excellence Director, Hotelbeds, said, “As we already knew based on our private conversations with hoteliers across the industry, this surveys confirms just how widespread concern is in the accommodation sector. Hoteliers are asking themselves ‘how can I stop rogue players selling online rates we´d intended for other channels?’.

“Clearly one of the biggest challenges for hoteliers is being able to actually identify the sales that misuse their policies. They simply don´t have the in-house technology or resources to do this.

“The good news however is that there is much that can be done to combat this challenge. During the webinar myself and the other panellists were able to offer sound advice on steps hotels can take to protect themselves.

“Addressing this challenge is a priority issue for us at Hotelbeds and that is why we have invested heavily in new and market-leading automated technologies unavailable elsewhere in the market, established a team dedicated to monitoring, and introduced at strict ‘three-strikes’ policy for offenders – all resulting in reported issuing falling down to just 0.01% of room night production.

“We have forfeited around €300 million of otherwise profitable sales to ensure compliance over the last year – but we’re determined to go further still.”

The webinar was attended by around 600 participants, a significant majority of which were hotel industry professionals, and topics of debate included the role of large OTAs in selling discounted rates, the role technology can play in monitoring and taking action, and how bedbanks are responding to this challenge.

Panelists for the debate included Carles Saniger, Global eCommerce Deputy Director from Barceló Hotel Group; Bill Allen, Chief Supply Officer from On the Beach; Mark Haywood, Senior Vice President from RateGain; and Paul Anthony, Global Sourcing Relations &amp; Commercial Excellence Director at Hotelbeds.

The webinar can be replayed via the Phocuswire website using the following link: https://www.phocuswire.com/Webinar-Hotelbeds-December-2019

&nbsp;

About Hotelbeds 

Hotelbeds is the world’s leading bedbank.

In a fragmented and complex travel landscape, Hotelbeds provides over 180,000 hotel properties across the globe with access to high-value, complementary distribution channels that significantly increase occupancy rates and optimise RevPAR – whilst not competing with the hotelier’s direct distribution strategy.

Hotelbeds does this by offering hoteliers access to a network of over 60,000 hard-to-access B2B travel buyers such as tour operators, retail travel agents, airline websites, and loyalty schemes in over 140 source markets worldwide. These channels provide hotel partners with returning guests that book further in advance, cancel less, spend more in-destination and stay longer.

In addition to accommodation, Hotelbeds is also the world’s largest B2B seller of travel ancillaries, offering 24,000 transfer routes and 18,000 activities, as well as attractions, tickets and car hire. Operating under the ‘Beyond the Bed’ product line, it provides both hoteliers and travel distribution partners with an efficient platform and powerful tools to easily integrate and commercialise its leading portfolio of high-margin products.

The company is headquartered in Palma, Spain and employs around 5,000 employees across over 60 offices globally.

&nbsp;

Follow us:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hotelbeds

Twitter: @Hotelbeds

acebook: Hotelbeds

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

Hotelbeds Media Contact

PR, Media Relations &amp; Corporate Affairs

Roman Townsend &nbsp;rtownsend@hotelbeds.com


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Hotelbeds publishes results of industry survey on rate integrity

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	The citizenM Shanghai Hongqiao hotel gains access to world’s largest distribution network of B2B travel trade buyers, with 60,000+ tour operators, points redemption schemes, airlines, and retail travel agents.
	Additionally the hotel will benefit from incremental, non-domestic bookings from high-value guests that pay higher rates, stay longer, cancel less, and spend more in destination.
	The deal covers the wholesale and retail distribution of citizenM Shanghai Hongqiao via both the Hotelbeds and Bedsonline brands.


Shanghai, 13th January 2020 – Hotelbeds, the world’s leading bedbank, has announced a strategic partnership with citizenM Shanghai Hongqiao, a Shanghai based property of the Netherlands-based hotel chain citizenM.

The partnership will provide Hotelbeds with exclusive access to citizenM Shanghai Hongqiao’s porfolio of more than 300 rooms. The 4-star affordable luxury hotel opened in June 2019 and is the 2nd property of citizenM in Asia-Pacific, and the 15th opening worldwide for the brand.

The agreement provides citizenM with distribution via both the wholesale and retail distribution channels of Hotelbeds, which operate under the ‘Hotelbeds’ and ‘Bedsonline’ brand names respectively.

With this new agreement citizenM increases its supply of inventory to the Hotelbeds distribution network, reaching over 60,000 travel trade buyers using the Hotelbeds booking platform, including tour operators, retail travel agencies, airlines and points redemption schemes in over 140 source markets.

Such B2B travel trade buyers will provide citizenM with a higher level of non-domestic bookings from high-value guests that typically book further in advance, pay more per room, cancel less, spend more in destination and are more likely to book again.

Forrest Zhang, Managing Director China, Hotelbeds, said, “We are delighted to partner with citizenM Shanghai Hongqiao to grow our business together. As a brand, citizenM is a boutique hotel with an affordable luxury experience and we are pleased to be able to offer this stylish and high-tech accommodation to our over 60,000 B2B travel trade buying customers such as tour operators, retail travel agents, airlines and points redemption schemes. Many of our customers look for trendy products and superior rooms and this new deal with citizenM ticks all these boxes.”

Kevin Yu, Hotel Manager at citizenM Shanghai Hongqiao, said, “We’re very excited to start a partnership with Hotelbeds.&nbsp; We have ambitious plans to grow further and extend our reach to more international markets, and Hotelbeds is the right partner to do so due to its extensive global reach of B2B travel buyers. citizenM is known for its unique style, top-line amenities, and innovative technology and we're confident that we will provide a great new option for travellers who book their stays in Shanghai through Hotelbeds. We look forward to growing bookings together.”

&nbsp;

About Hotelbeds 

Hotelbeds is the world’s leading bedbank.

In a fragmented and complex travel landscape, Hotelbeds provides over 180,000 hotel properties across the globe with access to high-value, complementary distribution channels that significantly increase occupancy rates and optimise RevPAR – whilst not competing with the hotelier’s direct distribution strategy.

Hotelbeds does this by offering hoteliers access to a network of over 60,000 hard-to-access B2B travel buyers such as tour operators, retail travel agents, airline websites, and loyalty schemes in over 140 source markets worldwide. These channels provide hotel partners with returning guests that book further in advance, cancel less, spend more in-destination and stay longer.

In addition to accommodation, Hotelbeds is also the world’s largest B2B seller of travel ancillaries, offering 24,000 transfer routes and 18,000 activities, as well as attractions, tickets and car hire. Operating under the ‘Beyond the Bed’ product line, it provides both hoteliers and travel distribution partners with an efficient platform and powerful tools to easily integrate and commercialise its leading portfolio of high-margin products.

The company is headquartered in Palma, Spain and employs around 5,000 employees across over 60 offices globally.

Follow us:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hotelbeds

Twitter: @Hotelbeds

Facebook: Hotelbeds

Hotelbeds Media Contact

PR, Media Relations &amp; Corporate Affairs

Wei Wang whitney.wang@hotelbeds.com

&nbsp;

About citizenM

The citizenM philosophy is ‘affordable luxury for the people’, offering guests all the luxuries they would expect from a high-end hotel in a prime location, but without sky-high prices. citizenM was founded by Rattan Chadha, the founder and former CEO of the fashion brand Mexx. The first citizenM hotel opened at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in 2008, and the brand now operates 19 hotels in some of the world’s most exciting cities including Shanghai, London, Paris, New York, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and Kuala Lumpur.

citizenM intends to keep growing as a fully integrated owner-operator in selected gateway cities around the world. Its unique value proposition, delivering a high profitability per square meter, allows the brand to develop hotels on prime locations in cities with the highest barriers to entry. citizenM can acquire development sites and turnkey delivered hotels and is open to joint ventures on individual projects. citizenM considers new-build developments, office conversions, components of mixed-use schemes or conversions of existing hotels. The company will also selectively consider asset light transactions.

In Asia Pacific the key target cities for further expansion are Sydney, Melbourne, Tokyo, Osaka, Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai and Beijing. citizenM aims to develop multiple hotels per selected target city.

&nbsp;

citizenM Contact 

Senior Communications Manager

Paola Tarazona citizenpaola@citizenm.com


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citizenM Shanghai Hongqiao gains access to incremental and high-value guests via Hotelbeds partnership


	
	Bedsonline confirms strong growth in room night sales as a result of new brand identity and proposition launch in January 2019, up by around 40% year-on-year.
	



	
	Following integration of GTA and Tourico Holidays into parent group, sister brand TravelCube’s customers migrated onto Bedsonline’s class-leading booking platform in January – increasing from 55,000 to 180,000 the number of hotel properties available.
	
	
	Australia is the 3rd biggest source market for the combined Hotelbeds and Bedsonline brands’ Asia-Pacific and 7th biggest globally, up from 8th place last year.
	
	
	Bedsonline to organize a ‘famil’ trip for Pacific top travel agents in 2020.

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Sydney, 30th December 2019. - Bedsonline, the leading global provider of accommodation and complementary travel products exclusively for travel agents, has today confirmed strong growth in Australia.

According to Bedsonline’s booking data, since the launch of the new brand identity and value proposition in January 2019 the number of room nights sold from the Australia source market has grown by approximately 40% year-on-year.

As a source market Australia remains the combined Hotelbeds and Bedsonline brands’ 3rd biggest source market in the APAC region and the 7th biggest source market for the company globally, up from 8th&nbsp;place last year.

This growth has been driven by the new value proposition of Bedsonline, following the integration of GTA and Tourico Holidays into Bedsonline’s parent group and sister brand TravelCube’s customers migrating earlier this year onto Bedsonline’s class-leading booking platform.

The new and enhanced platform now gives travel agents a powerful and user-friendly technology, along with local support, plus a diverse and competitive product portfolio – increasing from 55,000 to 180,000 the number of hotel properties available, whilst also providing 24,000 transfer routes and 18,000 activities, plus 140,000 cars available for hire.

To continue this growth Bedsonline plans to host 20 travel agents from the Pacific region for a ‘famil’ trip in 2020, details of which will be published soon. The purpose of this trip is to acquaint travel agents with the services and offerings of Hotelbeds’ partner hotels in the chosen destination.

Peter Jones, Regional Sales Manager, Pacific at Bedsonline commented: “I am very proud to see the outstanding sales growth in Australia this year. The result has been driven by our new and enhanced platform but is also a reflection of our hard work and persistence in the Pacific region and I´d like to congratulate every team member – as well as, of course, all our travel agent clients for their loyalty.

“In particular we are very glad to hear the positive feedback from our travel retailers on the new enhanced offerings, improved payment options, operational support and loyalty rewards program. We are committed to being the ultimate partner for travel businesses and in 2020 will be working harder than ever.”

“To maintain our success and growth we are going to hold, for the first time, a ‘famil’ trip for the top agent from a selection of our different clients. We want to give them a first-hand experience of the portfolio of accommodation, activities, and transfers that we work with in the destination. Such trips are invaluable for travel agents so that they can then give their customers that genuine personal advice.”

&nbsp;

About Bedsonline

Bedsonline&nbsp;is the leading global provider of accommodation and complementary travel products that exclusively caters to travel agents. It distributes through its online platform accommodation, excursions, tickets and transfers to more than 60,000 travel agencies with sales teams in over 40 countries covering over 100 markets globally.

The company stands out for its extensive portfolio – over 180,000 hotel properties in 185 destinations, 24,000 transfer routes and 18,000 activities – to offer a personalized local service through an intuitive and easy-to-use online booking tool. In this way, Bedsonline guarantees high availability and competitive prices to the great satisfaction of its clients.

The business-to-business online provider has focused its strategy in recent years on the expansion of new markets in Europe, America and Asia, such as Germany, the Czech Republic, Mexico, the United States, Colombia, China, Japan and the Philippines. This strategic vision has led the company to occupy a position of advantage in the industry.

Bedsonline is part of Hotelbeds, the world’s leading bedbank and business-to-business provider of services to the travel industry globally, and is headquartered in Palma, Spain.

&nbsp;

Hotelbeds Media Contact 

Media Relations &amp; Corporate Affairs

Wei Wang · whitney.wang@hotelbeds.com


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Bedsonline confirms strong Australia sales growth

Next week we welcome a new year and, more importantly, a new decade. Chris Branagan, our Director of Technology, gives us some insights about how the year has been for the industry from a technology perspective and explains what to expect for 2020 in hospitality and tourism.

Are there any non-travel industry technology companies that will have a big impact on the travel industry during 2020?

Out of all the tech giants Salesforce is now the fastest growing and we saw this in 2019. For example this year they bought Tableau and they´ve been very busy taking over many other companies. They are working their way towards offering a full service solution, including both customer acquisition, marketing, analytics and CRM.

Already they are now present in many parts of the travel technology eco-system and this looks set to increase. In 2020 I see more and more travel businesses turning to them to be their technology partner. Watch this space.

As more people book travel online, how is search demand evolving and how many searches does your business now handle daily?

The travel industry ‘look-to-book-ratio’ – the ratio of how many travel offers a consumer sees Vs making a purchase – has been exponentially growing for a long time now. I´d say that it has more or less doubled every nine months or so consistently for several years.

As a result we are seeing from clients more and more demand for search capacity and now that we are in the cloud we are able to support any level of demand – and now see regularly peaks of up to 4 billion searches a day.

What currently is driving the exponential increase in ‘look-to-book-ratios’ and demand for search power?

Historically this has been driven simply by the growth in online purchases of travel. But in recent years this has been driven more specifically by the growth in ‘hyper-connectivity’: everyone is connected to everyone.

Is there a better way to manage the insatiable demand for search data from travel sellers?

As technology improves the cost per search falls, of course, but currently the demand for increased search results means that the travel industry is not benefiting from this cost saving – in fact overall the cost per booking is probably increasing.

At Hotelbeds we are trialing methods of using machine learning to reduce the number of search results required for each request. How does this work? Right now the industry has a ‘one-size-fits-all-approach’: a search can returns all potential booking options, even though the vast majority of those results are not needed. Our aim is instead to give our clients a ‘curated feed’ based on their needs, using machine learning tools that look at their prior booking patterns and so on.

We hope to be able to announce more details about this next year and are very excited about this. Not only will this make us more competitive, clients will benefit significantly because processing search results costs them time, money and resources. In other words clients will see a reduction in costs, quicker search results, and content more relevant too for their end-consumer customers.

How is technology revolutionizing the retail travel agent selling experience?

I think that the Thomas Cook collapse really drove home to many both inside and outside of the travel industry that the high-street retailer still has an important and big part to play in selling holidays – but that there is a very clear dividing line between those doing it well, such as TUI, and those that have failed, with Thomas Cook being the most high-profile example.

What are the successful travel agents and tour operators doing? Embracing technology explains a signifi­cant part of their success. In many respects on the surface there is nothing radical about what they are do­ing. In fact they´re really just using modern techniques for selling, such as using large and multiple screens to help people visualize the experience. It’s been a radical change for many though, when you consider that only a few years back many still had the ‘green-and-black-terminals’ behind the desk (that they wouldn´t let you look at!).

More interestingly though from a technology perspective is what has happened behind the scenes here. The consumer can´t see this, but the technology innovations that have occurred to make sure that the trav­el agent is able to find the right content at the right price, easily and quickly, have been considerable.

I´m talking about search and filtering options, group booking/payment functions, issuing vouchers, refunds and cancellations, itinerary print-offs, multiple payments, digital after sales service, customer data bases, upselling ancillary services like a transfer, and much more. It’s not as glamourous as ‘instant bookings via Instagram’ or talking about using Alexa as your customer service solution, but these kind of iterative chang­es will continue to help high-street travel agents differentiate themselves from the big OTAs in 2020.

A few years ago ‘cloud’ was the buzz word in travel technology circles. Is there much more to say about cloud nowadays?

Many companies perhaps touted their ‘cloud’ capabilities long before they were really actually in the cloud, so it is still only very recently that many companies really switched to the cloud – and many still have that ahead of them, particularly in the travel sector where many relied on legacy data centre solutions.

This year there has been one big change worth noting though. More and more competitors have matured and this is driving down prices. Cloud costs for travel technology companies can take up a significant part of the IT budget, or even the overall budget, and so reduced costs are good news for everyone – not least for smaller travel technology companies, travel start-ups and, ultimately, for the end-traveller.

And finally, did blockchain realise its full potential for the travel sector during 2019?

Blockchain has once again disappointed in 2019 by failing to gain any kind of significant traction in the trav­el sector. Why? The simple answer is that whilst its potential uses are clear, no one is finding a cost-effective was to employ those uses yet.

Nonetheless we shouldn´t write it off yet. For decades we laughed at the failure of video phones to become widespread, but look how quickly they have become the choice for so many of us communicating over long-distances.

For example, there could be a very strong case for hotels to use blockchain to be able to confidently man­age the distribution of their rates and avoid OTAs using their opaque rates intended for offline channels. At this stage it is not a cost effective solution, but who knows maybe one day it will be?

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End-of-year industry outlook


	RateGain to monitor online rates of hotel partners of Hotelbeds to identify ‘rogue channels’ selling rates originally intended for distribution in offline channels.
	Partnership follows competitive RFP to find best third party provider of rate integrity technology solutions and monitoring tools.
	News forms part of long-term commitment of Hotelbeds to fight rate integrity abuse on behalf of 180,000 hotel property partners globally.
	Despite 90% reduction in issues to just 0.01%, Hotelbeds is determined to reduce incidences further still. &nbsp;


December 12th 2019, Palma: Hotelbeds, the world´s leading bedbank, has today reported the launch of a partnership with RateGain, the market leader in hospitality and travel technology solutions.

RateGain will provide Hotelbeds with ‘Parity+’ – an advanced end-to-end rate integrity management solution that use artificial intelligence (AI) to track integrity issues in real time – &nbsp;to help identify for its hotel partners cases of opaque rates intended for offline channels being sold in other channels.

Hotelbeds has chosen to work with RateGain following a competitive RFP to find the world’s leading third party provider of rate integrity technology and monitoring tools.

Entering into this agreement forms part of Hotelbeds’ commitment to take on responsibility for leading the fight against rate integrity abuse on behalf of the owners of the 180,000 properties that it partners with.

As part of this Hotelbeds has created a team dedicated to monitoring rates and invested in automated technology unavailable elsewhere in the market that uses data analytics to track travel sellers’ flows.

More recently Hotelbeds has introduced comprehensive measures and technology solutions, including a strict ‘three strikes’ policy for channels that violate distribution rules; tools that allow full traceability of rates; and the data-driven segmentation of customer channels to more closely align them with the distribution strategies of hotel partners.

As a direct result, Hotelbeds has&nbsp;given up €300 million of otherwise profitable sales over the last year, resulting in a 90% reduction of reported incidences over the last six months to just 0.01% of room night production.

Carlos Muñoz, Managing Director at Hotelbeds comments: “This year we have made significant progress in fighting rate integrity abuse on behalf of our hotel partners and I´m pleased to confirm that incidences are now down to just 0.01%.

“But we fully recognize that this is the number one priority for many hoteliers and we are fully determined to not only reduce incidences further still, but to also become the market leader of solutions that offer hotels distribution capabilities that ensure they can sell the right rate, in the right channel, to the right guest, at the right time. We want to provide transparency on the state of distribution with both Hotelbeds and other players to our hotel partners.

“Therefore, recently we put out an RFP to find the best third-party provider of rate integrity technology and monitoring solutions, and it gives me great pleasure to confirm that after carefully assessing all available providers, we´ll be working with RateGain to track down rogue sellers that violate agreements by selling opaque rates originally intended for offline channels.”

Apurva Chamaria, Chief Revenue Officer, RateGain technologies added: “We feel this partnership is a watershed moment for our sector as Hotelbeds sets a fantastic example to the whole hospitality sector as to how bedbanks can confront rogue sellers violating rate integrity.

“Naturally then the opportunity to work together to fight this cause was unmissable as no other bedbank takes this issue as seriously. Hotelbeds has a winning formula, not seen elsewhere in the market, that takes accurate client segmentation through its access to the largest data pool available of client data-points and behavior, and combines it with a commitment to investment into cutting-edge distribution technology and automated processes. &nbsp;

“Parity+ will provide Hotelbeds with an overall parity score, giving information on availability and rate violations by both property and meta-channels – as well as helping understand violation causes, all in an easy to navigate single view dashboard.

“Additionally, the ‘On Demand Data Refresh’ feature will assist Hotelbeds to be on top of issues across 500+ distribution channels and the ‘Test Reservation Module’ called ‘Closed Loop Service’ will uncover the rogue operator behind the leaked rates.”

Parity+ will allow Hotelbeds to configure smart rate shopping leveraging the data of DHISCO – the company acquired by RateGain – and comes with an AI ‘Auto Reasoning’ feature.&nbsp; By tackling integrity issues in real-time, and providing a robust rate integrity workflow management solution, Parity+ not only uncovers the rate integrity issues, but also automates the categorization and resolution of these issues, providing a complete solution for rate integrity management. Additionally, Parity+ provides industry best benchmark capabilities, meta-channels monitoring, multiple POS, mobile apps and member rates.

In recent years, Hotelbeds has focused hard on providing hotel partners with incremental, high-value bookings via B2B channels such as tour operators, retail travel agents, airlines, and points redemption schemes. These B2B channels provide hoteliers with guests that stay longer, book further in advance, cancel less, spend more in destination and come back more often.

About Hotelbeds:

Hotelbeds is the world’s leading bedbank. In a fragmented and complex travel landscape, Hotelbeds provides over 180,000 hotels properties across the globe with access to high-value, complementary distribution channels that significantly increase occupancy rates and optimise RevPAR – whilst not competing with the hotelier’s direct distribution strategy. Hotelbeds does this by offering hoteliers access to a network of over 60,000 hard-to-access B2B travel buyers such as tour operators, retail travel agents, airline websites, and loyalty schemes in over 140 source markets worldwide. These channels provide hotel partners with returning guests that book further in advance, cancel less, spend more in-destination and stay longer. In addition to accommodation, Hotelbeds is also the world’s largest B2B seller of travel ancillaries, offering 24,000 transfer routes and 18,000 activities, as well as attractions, tickets and car hire. Operating under the ‘Beyond the Bed’ product line, it provides both hoteliers and travel distribution partners with an efficient platform and powerful tools to easily integrate and commercialise its leading portfolio of high-margin products. The company is headquartered in Palma, Spain and employs around 5,000 employees across over 60 offices globally.

For more information, visit www.hotelbeds.com

About RateGain:

RateGain is the #1 provider of SaaS products, which help travel, and hospitality companies make more revenue every day. RateGain offers products, which help with rate intelligence, cognitive revenue management, smart e-distribution, and brand engagement. RateGain is proud to support 125,000+ hotel properties globally, influencing $13 Bn revenue by providing 240 billion rate and availability updates &amp; powering over 30 Million bookings. RateGain is trusted by 25 out of the top 30 OTAs, tour operators and wholesalers, 23 out of the top 30 hotel chains, 7 out of the top 10 car rental companies, top 5 cruise lines, and many leading airlines worldwide. In 2018, RateGain acquired DHISCO, which made it the only company in the world to offer end-to-end frictionless distribution. In June 2019, RateGain acquired award-winning BCV to offer guest experience cloud to maximize guest lifetime value for hospitality chains.

For more information, visit www.rategain.com

Forward-looking Statements:

Certain statements in this release are forward-looking statements, which involve some risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. All statements, other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements, including but not limited to the statements containing the words ‘planned,’ ‘expects,’ ‘believes,’’ strategy,’ ‘opportunity,’ ‘anticipates,’ ‘hopes’ or other similar words. The risks and uncertainties relating to these statements include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties regarding impact of pending regulatory proceedings, fluctuations in earnings, our ability to manage growth, intense competition in IT services, data services and consulting services including those factors which may affect our cost advantage, wage increases in India, customer acceptance of our services, products and fee structures, our ability to attract and retain highly skilled professionals, our ability to integrate acquired assets in a cost-effective and timely manner, time and cost overruns on fixed-price, fixed-timeframe contracts, client concentration, restrictions on immigration, our ability to manage our international operations, reduced demand for technology in our key focus areas, disruptions in telecommunication networks, our ability to successfully complete and integrate potential acquisitions, the success of our brand development efforts, liability for damages

Media Contact for Hotelbeds:

Roman Townsend

Media Relations &amp; Corporate Affairs Director

rtownsend@hotelbeds.com

&nbsp;

Media Contact for RateGain:

Ankit Chaturvedi

AVP Marketing - RateGain

ankit.chaturvedi@rategain.com

+91 9654502760


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Hotelbeds partners with RateGain to lead the sector in rate integrity 


	Hotelbeds signs five year hotel distribution deal with easyJet holidays
	Hotelbeds platform provides access to 180,000+ hotel properties, many contracted under exclusive terms and conditions, available globally.
	More than 40 airlines already partner with Hotelbeds for accommodation solutions – offering hoteliers access to hard-to-reach and non-domestic high-value bookings.


Palma, Spain 4 December 2019&nbsp;–&nbsp;Hotelbeds, the world’s leading bedbank, has today announced a strategic partnership with the all new easyJet holidays.&nbsp;

Hotelbeds has signed a strategic five year accommodation supplier agreement with easyJet holidays who will feature handpicked hotels from the Hotelbeds platform on its website along with directly contracted hotels for customers to choose from.

The Hotelbeds platform provides access to more than 180,000 unique hotel properties around the world, many of which are contracted under exclusive terms and conditions by a team of over 1,100 contracting professionals located in the most popular leisure destinations around the world.

Carlos Muñoz, Managing Director,&nbsp;Hotelbeds, said, “As the strategic bedbank partner of easyJet holidays, we look forward to watching it grow into one of Europe’s biggest holiday companies.

“All of us at Hotelbeds are immensely proud of the work we have done in helping easyJet holidays reach this point and we’re delighted to be able to continue working with them. This has demonstrated that Hotelbeds has the experience, technology and hotelier relationships available to help airlines implement and grow their tour operating volumes. This is already our fastest growing area, with over 40 partners globally.”&nbsp;

Garry Wilson, CEO, easyJet holidays, commented, “We have just launched our new easyJet holidays business bringing it in-house and selling directly to customers for the first time. It’s great to be able to continue our relationship with Hotelbeds working with them as a strategic bedbank partner. We’ve handpicked a portion of their properties to feature alongside a selection of our directly contracted hotels to give our customers some of the best hotels in Europe for their beach and city holidays. We look forward to growing and scaling our business working alongside Hotelbeds and complementing our in-house team.”

This deal adds to the over 40 airlines that currently partner with Hotelbeds, including the recently announced partnerships with Singapore Airlines and Luxair. The partnership with easyJet holidays reinforces the Hotelbeds position as an ideal strategic partner for airlines to fulfil their non-air ancillary revenues strategy.

In recent years Hotelbeds has grown the number of properties available to over 180,000 as part of a renewed focus on providing hotel partners with incremental and high-value bookings via its network of over 60,000 B2B travel trade buyers – including tour operators, retail travel agents, airline websites and loyalty and reward points schemes.

&nbsp;

About Hotelbeds 

Hotelbeds is the world’s leading bedbank.

In a fragmented and complex travel landscape, Hotelbeds provides over 180,000 hotels across the globe with access to high-value, complementary distribution channels that significantly increase occupancy rates and optimise RevPAR – whilst not competing with the hotelier’s direct distribution strategy.

Hotelbeds does this by offering hoteliers access to a network of over 60,000 hard-to-access B2B travel buyers such as tour operators, retail travel agents, airline websites, and loyalty schemes in over 140 source markets worldwide. These channels provide hotel partners with returning guests that book further in advance, cancel less, spend more in-destination and stay longer.

In addition to accommodation, Hotelbeds is also the world’s largest B2B seller of travel ancillaries, offering 24,000 transfer routes and 18,000 activities, as well as attractions, tickets and car hire. Operating under the ‘Beyond the Bed’ product line, it provides both hoteliers and travel distribution partners with an efficient platform and powerful tools to easily integrate and commercialise its leading portfolio of high-margin products.

The company is headquartered in Palma, Spain and employs around 5,000 employees across over 60 offices globally.

&nbsp;

Follow us:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hotelbeds

Twitter: @Hotelbeds

Facebook: Hotelbeds

Instagram: @hotelbeds_official

&nbsp;&nbsp;

Hotelbeds media contact

PR, Media Relations &amp; Corporate Affairs

Roman Townsend rtownsend@hotelbeds.com

&nbsp;

&nbsp;


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Hotelbeds and easyJet holidays sign strategic partnership


	Over 50% of bookings that Hotelbeds provides its hotel partners are for at least four nights – with 24% staying seven nights or more.[1]
	Long-stay guest profile driven by high proportion of non-domestic guests derived from Hotelbeds’ network of 60,000+ travel agents, tour operators, airlines and loyalty schemes globally.
	Hotelbeds committed to distribution channels that offer hoteliers high-value guests that book further in advance, cancel less, stay longer and spend more in destination.


Palma (Spain), 27th November 2019. Hotelbeds, the world’s leading bedbank, has today provided an update on the average number of nights booked with its hotel partners via its network of over 60,000 travel trade buyers globally.

As part of Hotelbeds’ commitment to provide hoteliers with high-value guests, the company has confirmed today that over 50% of its bookings are for four or more nights – with 24% staying seven nights or more.

Hotelbeds is committed to delivering the highest quality of incremental bookings to its hotelier partners via its network of over 60,000 travel agents, tour operators, airlines, and loyalty point schemes from over 140 source markets globally.

Reservations via B2B travel buyers tend to offer a higher proportion of non-domestic and long-haul travellers, who in turn offer hoteliers incremental guests that – in addition to staying for longer on average – book further in advance, cancel less, stay longer and spend more in destination.

At a global level, over 60% of bookings made via Hotelbeds are derived from non-domestic source markets, with some high-demand destinations registering a much greater percentage of international guests. &nbsp;&nbsp;

Carlos Muñoz, Hotelbeds Managing Director commented: “Hoteliers place significant value on guests who stay more nights, not just because more nights means more revenue – but because it increases their margins, as these guests tend to be from non-domestic long haul markets and that means that on average they book further in advance, cancel less, spend more in-destination and come back more often.

“So, I am very pleased to be able to confirm than more than 50% of our bookings are now for at least four nights with 24% staying seven nights or more.&nbsp;

“As our business continues to grow its base of high-value B2B buyers – of which we have over 60,000, including travel agents, tour operators, airlines and points redemption schemes – we hope to be able to increase further still the average length and value of a booking for our hotel partners.”

&nbsp;

About Hotelbeds 

Hotelbeds is the world’s leading bedbank.

In a fragmented and complex travel landscape, Hotelbeds provides over 180,000 hotels across the globe with access to high-value, complementary distribution channels that significantly increase occupancy rates and optimise RevPAR – whilst not competing with the hotelier’s direct distribution strategy.

Hotelbeds does this by offering hoteliers access to a network of over 60,000 hard-to-access B2B travel buyers such as tour operators, retail travel agents, airline websites, and loyalty schemes in over 140 source markets worldwide. These channels provide hotel partners with returning guests that book further in advance, cancel less, spend more in-destination and stay longer.

In addition to accommodation, Hotelbeds is also the world’s largest B2B seller of travel ancillaries, offering 24,000 transfer routes and 18,000 activities, as well as attractions, tickets and car hire. Operating under the ‘Beyond the Bed’ product line, it provides both hoteliers and travel distribution partners with an efficient platform and powerful tools to easily integrate and commercialise its leading portfolio of high-margin products.

The company is headquartered in Palma, Spain and employs around 5,000 employees across over 60 offices globally.

Follow us:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hotelbeds

Twitter: @Hotelbeds

Facebook: Hotelbeds

Instagram: @hotelbeds_official

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

Hotelbeds media contact

Antonia Aguiló

a.aguilo@hotelbeds.com

&nbsp;




[1] All data based on reservations made via Hotelbeds during the 2018 / 19 financial year (ended 30 September 2019).




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Hotelbeds drives non-domestic, long-stay guests to its hotel partners


	Since launching in 2018 campaigns have delivered increases of an average of up to 30% for over 50 tourism boards globally.
	Tourism Boards benefit from accessing 60,000+ B2B travel partners, together making 1.5 billion hotel searches daily via Hotelbeds.
	Each strategic campaign enables Tourism Boards to navigate the highly fragmented landscape of the global travel industry, targeting specific demographics in desired source markets.


Palma, Spain, 19 November 2019. Hotelbeds, the world’s leading B2B distributor of travel, has today confirmed the successful launch of an industry-first B2B service for destination marketing organizations (DMOs) globally to drive incremental tourism arrivals.&nbsp;

Leveraging the company’s technology, booking platform, and relationships with hoteliers and B2B travel buyers globally, Hotelbeds has to date already worked with over 50 tourism boards from around the world.

The result has been to increase room nights for target destinations by up to 30% on average – plus improving revenue performance – by attracting additional low- and shoulder-season visitors from international and domestic source markets globally.

Partner destinations receive access to the over 60,000 B2B travel trade buyers – such as retail travel agents, tour operators, airlines, and points redemption clients – who together make over 1.5 billion accommodation searches per day via Hotelbeds.

Due to the international reach of Hotelbeds – present in over 140 source markets globally, with the fast-growing Chinese market already the fourth biggest globally for the company – destination partners also benefit from receiving more international and long-haul arrivals. Bookings from international and long-haul source markets&nbsp; in turn deliver high-value customers who spend more in destination, stay longer, cancel less, return more often and book farther out than typical direct to consumer customer profiles (which tend to be highly domestic).

Gareth Matthews, Director of Marketing &amp; Communications at Hotelbeds, stated: “Our whole purpose as a travel distributor is to drive incremental high-value bookings for hotels from non-competing, hard to reach B2B travel trade sources such as retail travel agents and tour operators. So we thought why not also do the same for destinations? No one else is offering destination marketing boards such a comprehensive set of opportunities that allows them to easily access the distribution power of the world’s travel trade.&nbsp; We launched the service at a global level last year and I´m pleased to confirm that our knowledge, experience and infrastructure is already delivering, on average, increases in incoming visitor paxes of 30% for our destination partners.”

Joseph Sheller, Head of Destination Marketing, commented, “I am proud to say that our Hotelbeds Destination Marketing service is in high demand on a global level. We pride ourselves on delivering highly tangible ROI for our partners and measure our success by the incremental year-over-year increase in room nights/PAX produced by the campaigns, as well as the total overall economic impact.&nbsp; What destination doesn´t want incremental visitors that also stay longer and spend more, especially during the low- and shoulder-seasons? As the first B2B travel distributor to launch this service, we are truly revolutionizing the landscape of destination marketing!”&nbsp;&nbsp;

About Hotelbeds

In a fragmented and complex travel landscape, Hotelbeds provides over 180,000 hotels across the globe with access to high-value, complementary distribution channels that significantly increase occupancy rates and optimise RevPAR – whilst not competing with the hotelier’s direct distribution strategy.

Hotelbeds does this by offering hoteliers access to a network of over 60,000 hard-to-access B2B travel buyers such as tour operators, retail travel agents, airline websites, and loyalty schemes in over 140 source markets worldwide. These channels provide hotel partners with returning guests that book further in advance, cancel less, spend more in-destination and stay longer.

In addition to accommodation, Hotelbeds is also the world’s largest B2B seller of travel ancillaries, offering 24,000 transfer routes and 18,000 activities, as well as attractions, tickets and car hire. Operating under the ‘Beyond the

Bed’ product line, it provides both hoteliers and travel distribution partners with an efficient platform and powerful tools to easily integrate and commercialise its leading portfolio of high-margin products.

The company is headquartered in Palma, Spain and employs around 5,000 employees across over 60 offices globally.

Follow us on:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hotelbeds-group

Twitter: @Hotelbeds

Facebook: Hotelbeds


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Hotelbeds partners with tourism boards to drive incremental visitors with industry-first B2B service


	Hotelbeds has generated strong financial performance for the year ended 30th September 2019 with EBITDA[1] of €233.5 million and a cash position of €498 million at that date.
	Hotelbeds has now consolidated into one unified business following successful integration of Tourico Holidays and GTA acquisitions. &nbsp;
	Company well positioned to drive high value, incremental reservations to hoteliers globally from portfolio of 60,000 travel agents, tour operators, airlines and loyalty point schemes.
	Launch of strategic optimisation plan to reduce ‘cost-per-room-night’[2] &nbsp;from current €6.30 level to €4.90 by end-2021 to become the most efficient bedbank globally.


Palma, Spain 13th November 2019 – Hotelbeds, the world´s leading bedbank, has today provided an update post financial year-end.

For the financial year ended 30th September 2019, the company demonstrated strong performance with EBITDA of €233.5 million (see table below):


	
		
			
			Combined EBITDA for the financial years ending:
			
		
		
			
			30th September 2017
			
			
			30th September 2018
			
			
			30th September 2019
			
		
		
			
			€180.9m
			
			
			€207.9m
			
			
			€233.5m
			
		
	


In addition, as at 30th September 2019, the company had a strong cash position of €498 million.

The newly consolidated company is now well positioned, as the leader in its segment, to provide its 180,000 hotel partners globally with incremental, high-value bookings via the company’s portfolio of over 60,000 travel trade buyers, including retail travel agents, tour operators, airlines and points redemption schemes.

Post year-end and following the completed integration, Hotelbeds is focused on becoming the most efficient bedbank player in the industry. To achieve this, the company has identified significant new opportunities to optimise its footprint, operations and commercial model, by investing in automation and cutting-edge technology to improve both the customer experience for its partners, as well as better utilise the scale of its recently combined operations.

Hotelbeds’ target is to lower the ‘cost-per-room-night’ from its current €6.30 level to €4.90 by year-end 2021. This level of efficiency is achievable as the stand-alone Hotelbeds business in 2016, prior to integration, was already achieving a €5.40 cost-per-room-night without the scale and expertise of the newly combined company.

As part of this post-integration, optimisation plan, Hotelbeds has today informed staff that there will be some departures, representing a reduction in the global workforce by about 5%. This will take place in stages over the next 12 months resulting in the scaling down of hubs in Tel Aviv, London, Dubai, Orlando and Zurich.

At the same time, Hotelbeds is announcing that it is investing in the opening of a new technology hub in Valencia, Spain that will drive the future development of the automated platforms, processes and technology that aims to make working with Hotelbeds more seamless and cost efficient for partners.

Joan Vilà, Executive Chairman at Hotelbeds, said: “These results represent a remarkable achievement in what has been an intense year for our teams worldwide as they have worked incredibly hard, in a complex context, to integrate the top three leading players in our segment. I thank all our employees for the level of commitment and initiative they have shown during this period. 

“Post-integration, we can focus once again, without distraction, on managing the day-to-day operations of our business to deliver increased value for our travel trade partners. This is also the perfect moment to optimise our operations and fully utilise our strong position to deliver the level of efficiencies our scale and combined capabilities enables.

“As a fully integrated company and the biggest independent bedbank worldwide, coupled with the financial strength and resilience of the business, we are now well positioned, with a clear strategy and focus, to deliver on our ambitious growth plans.”

About Hotelbeds 

Hotelbeds is the world’s leading bedbank.

In a fragmented and complex travel landscape, Hotelbeds provides over 180,000 hotels across the globe with access to high-value, complementary distribution channels that significantly increase occupancy rates and optimise RevPAR – whilst not competing with the hotelier’s direct distribution strategy.

Hotelbeds does this by offering hoteliers access to a network of over 60,000 hard-to-access B2B travel buyers such as tour operators, retail travel agents, airline websites, and loyalty schemes in over 140 source markets worldwide. These channels provide hotel partners with returning guests that book further in advance, cancel less, spend more in-destination and stay longer.

In addition to accommodation, Hotelbeds is also the world’s largest B2B seller of travel ancillaries, offering 24,000 transfer routes and 18,000 activities, as well as attractions, tickets and car hire. Operating under the ‘Beyond the Bed’ product line, it provides both hoteliers and travel distribution partners with an efficient platform and powerful tools to easily integrate and commercialise its leading portfolio of high-margin products.

The company is headquartered in Palma, Spain and employs around 5,000 employees across over 60 offices globally.

&nbsp;

Follow us on:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hotelbeds

Twitter: @Hotelbeds

Facebook: Hotelbeds

&nbsp;

Hotelbeds media contact

PR, Media Relations &amp; Corporate Affairs

Roman Townsend&nbsp;rtownsend@hotelbeds.com

&nbsp;

&nbsp;


[1] EBITDA - Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, acquisition and integration costs.



[2] Cost-per-room-night is a key metric used by Hotelbeds to measure the cost-efficiency of the business.




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Hotelbeds announces successful consolidation of acquisitions and strong 2019 year-end results

The closure of Amoma last month generated a lot of news. Within that you may have seen debate about what role bedbanks play in providing B2C sellers such as Amoma with discounted rates, originally meant for offline channels such as retail travel agents or tour operators?

Therefore we at Hotelbeds want to set the record straight on this issue. As we are the biggest bedbank in the world and sell over 50 million room nights a year, I would like to update you on how our place in the travel distribution eco-system has evolved over the last few years.

As we integrated both Tourico Holidays and GTA into our business over the last two years, we have been busy listening to our hotel partners to greater understand their needs. Two particular areas of feedback stood out and we have responded to those.

Firstly the need for hoteliers to be able to more efficiently and accurately segment their distribution across various channels.

And secondly, the need to access incremental bookings from high-value guests, in particular long-haul travellers.

This is why over the last two years we have been evolving our business to offer our hotel partners access to reservations from hard-to-reach channels such as retail travel agents, tour operators, points redemption schemes and airlines. These channels provide travellers who book further in advance, cancel less, stay for longer, pay more per night, spend more in-destination, and come back more often.

As a direct result of this, we had been steadily reducing our sales via Amoma over the last few years and at the time of its collapse it represented less than 1% (and falling) of our sales.

Equally we have been reducing sales with other similar players and in the last year alone have forfeited approximately 250 million euros worth of similar business – as we did not see these bookings as in the interest of our hotel partners.

Additionally we have increased our investment and resources focused on this area to create enlarged teams and improved technology solutions that help identify any issues quickly for our hotel partners.

And for those B2C buyers that are not adhering to our clear distribution management rules, we have also introduced a ‘three strikes and you are out’ policy. Any online travel agent that distributes content intended for offline in an online B2C sales channel, just three times, will find themselves cut-off from distributing that hotel via Hotelbeds.

As a result of these efforts we are now seeing our hotel partners report close to zero percent of instances of problems – from a room night production basis – and this figure keeps falling.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Currently around 75% of the sales we gain for our hotel partners are either from non-domestic source markets – in particular China, which is now our fourth biggest source market globally – or from off-line channels such as tour operators, airlines (via their booking process and call centres), retail travel agents or points redemption and loyalty schemes.

Retail travel agents in particular provide hoteliers with hard-to-reach and very high-value guests. That’s why over the next three years we plan to increase by 14,000 the number of retail travel agents we work with, taking our total travel agency portfolio to 64,000 – all served and managed by our Bedsonline brand.

Perhaps you now begin to see why our business with Amoma had steadily reduced? This is why in the coming months and years we anticipate that the Amomas of the world will become more and more insignificant. Not only does their business model impact negatively on all of our hotel partners, whether independent or chain, but in the long term it is not sustainable for the industry. &nbsp;

To learn more about the issue of rate integrity – and bedbanks in general - read our White Paper published last week,&nbsp;Reach, Growth and Occupancy:&nbsp;The real value of the bedbank distribution model&nbsp;https://www.phocuswire.com/Hotelbeds-value-of-bedbanks-report

&nbsp;


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Amomas closure creates an important question for hoteliers: how to stop OTAs abusing discounted rates?

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