Hotelbeds Kicks Off Markethub Americas Conference as Newly Integrated Company
by杰西卡·蒙特瓦哥/
It’s been a whirlwind 12 months for Hotelbeds, as the wholesaler wraps up integratng Tourico Holidays and GTA with Hotelbeds Group. The acquisitions in 2017 gave the Palma de Mallorca, Spain-based company considerable leverage. The company is now the leader in the business-to-business bedbank market, with a network of 60,000 travel-buying intermediaries, including travel agencies, tour operators, and airlines, in over 140 markets.
Hosting its first conference since the integration, the Hotelbeds annual Markethub Americas was held last week at Grand Palladium Costa Mujeres Resort in Mexico, showcasing its new look and brand identity to more than 500 industry leaders attending the event.
This year’s theme was “Shifting Futures,” exploring the changes in the travel sector and how the industry can prepare for the future.
尽管旅行和旅游业的增长巨大,但连续八年优于世界经济,但美国Revpar开始散布。2018年,Revpar为2.8%;预计2019年将降至2.3%;2020年可能会进一步下降至1.9%。
虽然他承认自己的预测令人沮丧,但山姆·特纳(Sam Turner),批发销售和酒店的采购总监讨论了该行业如何克服整体放缓和行业中的其他干扰。
“您如何将业务模式与较大的在线玩家区分开?您是否真的很清楚什么使您与众不同,因为我认为这将越来越多地进入困难时期,”他在会议上说。
特纳说,通过最佳利率保证计划,酒店床位的核心战略之一将是以更可持续的方式解决费率的分配,在休闲和城市目的地中提供大幅降低的酒店价格。beplay银行卡
“It’s what really differentiates us from the competition and what helps travel agents compete with the OTAs,” Matias Elisavetsky, regional director of sourcing Americas, at Hotelbeds, said in speaking with Travel Market Report. “We’re seven times larger than the next bedbank, and that really gives us the leverage and the scale to bring this product to travel agents,” which will help them make more margins and give them a very competitive product.
Elisavetsky负责330个承包商,在奥兰多,曼哈顿,洛杉矶和多伦多的主要办事处;与新奥尔良,华盛顿和丹佛的地面上的人一起。他监督了该公司最近宣布的,包括北美洲,中美洲和南美在内的美洲地区43,000家独特的酒店,占该贝德班克全球180,000家酒店的近四分之一。去年,签署重要的战略酒店伙伴关系的签署已帮助使美洲的酒店数量增加了近14%。它在该地区的主要beplay银行卡目的地是纽约,奥兰多,拉斯维加斯,坎昆和迈阿密。
Global Marketing & Communications Director Gareth Matthews was the conference's MC.
New booking system helps sell ancillary products
The merger also introduced an integrated online booking system, Bedsonline, with triple the amount of hotel inventory and travel ancillaries, including 24,000 transfers and 18,000 activities. “The trips are all about that, it’s all about the activities. The room can be great but people really want to explore, and it’s a very easy way to expand profitability,” Elisavetsky said.
Turner said this is something everyone should take advantage of in the future to increase profitability when hotel rates dip. “We still see many customers not taking advantage of that. I think one of the key things when you consider the cost of acquisition, whether your cost is online acquisition or offline acquisition, the cost of acquiring customers is ‘X.’
“If you can sell an incremental service that really is, in some cases, doubling the profit you make on the business — because you got the margin and cost of acquisition, and you add a little bit of incremental ancillary on top and you can effectively double the margin for booking — and that, for me, is the secret there, and we should be doing more of that. You see some of the larger players doing more of that, as well.”
新预订系统的增强功能有20个过滤器,使旅行社可以根据客户的要求轻松地完善搜索。搜索工具可用于酒店,目的地和感兴趣的地方。beplay银行卡该公司目前正在使用Amazon Web服务,以过渡到开源的,基于云的IT基础架构。
该平台允许顾问修改预订,处理投诉并添加特殊要求;并提供对电子书,视频,网络研讨会,活动和家族旅行以及有用的模板和工具。还有24/7全天候的客户服务,其中有9个呼叫中心枢纽,大约有400个客户支持代理商,该公司计划介绍实时聊天和回电解决方案。