Tag Archives: Hotelbeds

The Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi (DCT Abu Dhabi) has announced a partnership with Hotelbeds, global leaders in the TravelTech space, to encourage travel agents to promote Abu Dhabi across key and emerging markets as a leading tourist destination. The strategic partnership will drive further awareness of Abu Dhabi among Hotelbeds’ network of travel agents and partners. The partnership also opens up opportunities for the two entities to work together on roadshows and meetings with travel partners, as well as collaborate on initiatives to promote attractions and events in Abu Dhabi. Additionally, the partnership will promote Abu Dhabi’s ESG initiatives through Hotelbeds’ existing projects such as the ‘Green Hotel Programme’. Designed to identify and promote officially certified properties as sustainable accommodation, Hotelbeds’ Green Hotel Programme is part of a pledge to offer solutions for destinations to participate in the travel industry’s path towards sustainability. The 12-month partnership, which was announced at World Travel Market (WTM) 2022 in London, will help drive further awareness of Abu Dhabi as a destination that is unique in the diversity of thoughtful and enriching experiences it offers, among consumers and trade partners. HE Saleh Mohamed Saleh Al Geziry, Director General for Tourism at DCT Abu Dhabi, said: “We are delighted to announce the extended partnership with Hotelbeds, which will further boost Abu Dhabi’s attractive offering. Hotelbeds is a key global partner for DCT Abu Dhabi, and we look forward to working with them closely over the next year to showcase Abu Dhabi and welcome visitors to find their own pace and explore all that it has to offer.” Joseph Sheller, Head of Global Destination Marketing at Hotelbeds, said: “Our partnership with Abu …

Bedsonline has launched the latest, upgraded version of The Compass, its award-winning market intelligence platform. The Compass harnesses Bedsonline’s real-time data to provide clients with the latest trends and up-to-date insights to help them promote the right destinations at the right time to their customers. Through its powerful search engine, travel advisors can identify market-specific booking patterns and use the filters to set their preferences when they select a destination. Once the selection is made, travel advisors can create their own personalized and branded marketing materials directly from the tool and easily share it with their customers. This latest upgrade, which is available in all Bedsonline markets, comes with a refreshed design and new functionality including: Automatic translation with information related to each destination now displayed in the client’s default language; More data including information on hotels and destinations not currently booked; The inclusion of destination and hotels proof points meaning that from now on, travel agents will be able to see – in real time – data related to the destination and hotels based on what they buy and how much they buy so that the information is fully tailored to each and every Bedsonline client. Since its launch in August last year, The Compass has managed over 80,000 visits for Bedsonline clients. Paul Anthony, Digital Commercialisation Director at Hotelbeds, the parent company of Bedsonline, said, “Now that the industry is slowly recovering, it is more essential than ever to provide our clients with the best tools available to help them harness all the pent up demand that is out there. This is why we are delighted to unveil this new version of The Compass, with its added functionality …

Hotelbeds’ Executive Chairman, Joan Vilà, after dedicating more than 30 years of his career to driving significant innovation, transformation, and growth, is announcing his decision to move to a non-executive role on the Board of Hotelbeds with immediate effect. Joan had originally planned to step back from the day-to-day running of the company in 2020, but the impact of COVID-19 required him to delay the move to focus on successfully navigating the company through the global crisis. Now, with a strengthened balance sheet and with the company in a good position to capitalise on the recovery once travel demand returns, Joan believes that this is the right time for him to follow his original plan to move to a non-executive role on Hotelbeds’ board. Nicolas Huss, the former CEO of Ingenico and Visa Europe, is an experienced board-level executive and CEO with a very strong reputation in the payments, financial services, and travel industries, where he has led significant growth, transformation and innovation. He brings to Hotelbeds extensive experience in leading technology and digital companies as well as a proven track record for driving organic growth. A French national, Nicolas has a truly international background and has lived and worked in many countries, including Spain where he was previously based for seven years.   Nicolas Huss said: “I’m really looking forward to taking the reins at Hotelbeds, the market leader in its segment. Joan Vilà’s strategic vision and relentless drive to innovate and internationalise has created a wonderful company and a fantastic workforce with a truly dynamic culture. Together with Carlos Muñoz and Andrés García-Tenorio, and the rest of the highly experienced Executive Leadership Team, we are well positioned to …

Ahead of the Arabian Travel Market (ATM) taking place in Dubai next month, Hotelbeds, the world’s leading bedbank, has revealed that the prestigious city has consistently been within its top three destinations by room nights sold throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, Hotelbeds, despite the crisis, has recovered to pre-COVID volumes, year to date, for the wider UAE as destination. Both early bird bookings and last-minute reservations characterize the majority of the room nights sold. Ali Taheri, Regional Sourcing Director commented, “While the whole of the travel industry has been severely impacted by the COVID-19 crisis, it is fantastic news that we can name Dubai as one of our leading destinations during this time, highlighting its enduring magnetism for travellers. “As a region, and as a team, we have been able to maintain high levels of resilience during these unprecedented times and this is due to a number of factors. Firstly, having exposure to a diversified domestic and international client base protected us against the risk of lost volumes in closed corridors and secondly, we benefitted from uninterrupted cash flow while many players were facing systemic cash restrictions. And last but not least, the destructive nature of the pandemic brought out the streetfighter spirit in the team!”  

Hotelbeds announced a strategic partnership with Banyan Tree Group. With this agreement, Hotelbeds has secured exclusive offers and privileges for its customers at Banyan Tree Group’s 48 hotels across 22 countries. This new partnership will provide Banyan Tree Group with access to Hotelbeds’ 60,000 travel trade buyers based in more than 140 source markets worldwide, that includes high value channels such as travel agents, tour operators, airlines and points redemption programmes. With this strategic partnership, and in anticipation of the resumption of safe travel, Banyan Tree Group will benefit from expanding its customer reach, while giving Hotelbeds’ customers access to exclusive rates designed to inspire travel and help fuel the industry’s recovery. Jorge Cortés, Global Sourcing Director at Hotelbeds said, “Banyan Tree Group is one of our key partners with amazing properties in top destinations worldwide. Thanks to an exceptional business relationship, we are looking to increase our business with them and in turn, provide our global travel trade buyers the opportunity to book and experience its amazing hotels once safe travel resumes.” Bobby Ong, Vice President, Head of Growth from Banyan Tree Group said, “Hotelbeds is well-established in the hospitality industry with its extensive network. This strategic partnership highlights the collaboration of two forward-looking industry brands. With wellbeing and sustainability at our core, our Group’s multi-brand portfolio will cater to discerning customers with different needs for travel post-Covid. With this partnership, we are pleased to strengthen our global reach to travel trade buyers and welcome more international travellers to our awe-inspiring destinations around the world.”

Hotelbeds announced a preferred deal with Flight Centre, this partnership Hotelbeds and its retail channel Bedsonline – that exclusively caters to retail travel agents – will increase distribution reach in Australia, New Zealand, the UK, South Africa, Canada, the USA, India, Hong Kong, and Dubai. As part of the partnership Flight Centre will connect to Hotelbeds’ product portfolio via the API solutions offered by Hotelbeds.Flight Centre will gain full access to Hotelbeds’ extensive portfolio of 180,000 hotel properties in 140 countries worldwide providing breadth and depth of range globally – many of which are contracted under special terms and conditions – supplementing Flight Centre’s own direct range. In addition, Flight Centre will also now offer its clients ancillary services from the Beyond The Bed portfolio of Hotelbeds, which comprises 25,000 transfer routes, 18,000 activities in more than 680 destinations, and 30,000 pick-up locations in 170 countries. León Herce, Global Sales Director at Hotelbeds said, “We are very excited to announce our preferred partnership with Flight Centre. Not only is Flight Centre one of the largest retail travel in Australia but it also has many outlets on high streets in leading source markets worldwide. “This is great news for our 180,000 hotel property partners worldwide, all of whom place great value on retail travel agency guests – not least from long-haul source markets such as Australia, New Zealand, UK, South Africa, Canada, the USA, India, Hong Kong, and Dubai.” Michelle Connolly, Global Procurement Leader – Leisure at Flight Centre, added, “We have ambitious plans to grow further and extend our sales reach to more international markets, and Hotelbeds is the right partner to do so due to its extensive global portfolio …

Hotelbeds announced a strategic partnership with Thomas Cook following the acquisition of the brand by Fosun Tourism Group. Thanks to this collaboration Thomas Cook will gain access to more than 180,000 unique hotel properties in 140 countries worldwide, many of which are contracted under exclusive terms and conditions by a team of over 1,000 contracting professionals located in the most popular leisure destinations around the world. Thomas Cook joins Hotelbeds’ existing 60,000 travel trade buyers – such as tour operators, travel agents, airlines and points redemption schemes – who typically book further in advance, pay more per room, stay for longer, have lower cancellation rates and spend more at the property. León Herce, Global Sales Director at Hotelbeds said, “All of us at Hotelbeds are immensely pleased to see Thomas Cook relaunching and we’re delighted to be able to support their new model. Hotelbeds has the experience, technology and hotelier relationships available to help Thomas Cook attract travellers with the best possible service and hotel product. We look forward to watching it grow once again into one of Europe’s leading holiday brands.” Emma King, Head of commercial product added, “When we were developing our new Thomas Cook we wanted to offer our customers the widest possible choice of hotel accommodation – and to be able to do that quickly without the need for direct contracting. Our relationship with Hotelbeds as a strategic bedbank partner, gives our customers access to a huge portfolio of exclusive and competitively priced hotels worldwide. We’re only selling holidays to destinations on the UK government’s travel corridor list, including Turkey, Italy and some parts of Greece. We will update that once travel restrictions change or are …

Hotelbeds launches 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 – 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. 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 am pleased to confirm that incidences are now down to just 0.01%.”

Hotelbeds announced a strategic alliance with Selina, one of the fastest growing hotel brands in the world. This strategic agreement will give Selina access to Hotelbeds’ large high-value distribution network made up of more than 60,000 travel agents, airlines, tour operators and loyalty programmes in more than 140 source markets worldwide. At the same time, Hotelbeds customers will have, from now on, access to the Selina hotel portfolio, consisting of more than 52 properties located mainly in Latin America, but also across Europe, with properties in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Greece, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Portugal and the United Kingdom. The hotel chain plans to open more than 35 locations in 2019, including upcoming openings in the United States, United Kingdom, Portugal, Greece, Germany, Chile, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina. Felipe Muñoz, Global Head of Sales for Selina, commented, “This alliance is very important for Selina as thanks to Hotelbeds we can have access to one of the largest B2B distribution networks, including both wholesale and retail, in the world.” Matias Elisavetsky, Regional Director of Sourcing for Hotelbeds in Americas, said, “Selina is one of the fastest growing hotel chains in Latin America, with plans to further expand its reach and become known not only in Latin America, but also the United States, Asia, and Europe.”

Hotelbeds, the world’s leading business-to-business bedbank announced the results of its recently launched Corporate Volunteering programme, as part of Hotelbeds’ Corporate Sustainability strategy. The programme, which was recently launched at the company’s headquarters in Palma, Spain, has already reached a participation rate of 60% amongst employees where the programme is live.  Employees have already participated in around 230 volunteering activities and dedicated 5,000+ hours to support the following areas: the environment, health, people at risk of social exclusion, poverty and childhood. Launched in the first office one year ago, Hotelbeds has gradually rolled out the programme globally hosting 11 events across its different Hotelbeds offices worldwide, including Orlando, Singapore, Bangkok, Cancun, Tel Aviv, Dubai, London, Beijing, Shanghai, Zurich and most recently the headquarters in Palma de Mallorca, reaching a total of 3,000 of  5,000 employees worldwide. Around 50 NGOs around the globe have been able to benefit from the Hotelbeds Corporate Volunteering programme, including NGOs such as Give Kids the World in Orlando,  Beyond Social Services in Singapore, The Thai Red Cross in Bangkok, Mallorca Sense Fam and El Grec in Mallorca and Food for Life in Tel Aviv, among many others. Elena Pérez, Human Resources Director at Hotelbeds, says, “I am thrilled that we have already more than 60% of our employees participating in the Volunteering Programme – this is before we’ve even rolled-out the programme in all offices.” Teresa Laso, who leads Corporate Sustainability at Hotelbeds, adds, “I’m very proud of the great success of our Volunteering Program worldwide. At Hotelbeds we strongly believe that giving back to the community is at the core of our culture and with this initiative we wanted to go one step further …