Eight additional hotel brands are to partner with the Abacus Best Available Rates (BAR) program as the company revealed. The new brand partners include Americas Best Value Inn by Vantage, Design Hotels, Langham Hotels International, Lexington Collection by Vantage, Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, Meritus Hotels and Resorts, Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts and Sol Melia Hotels.

Craig Fong, Vice-President of Non-Air Content for Abacus, said the new partners provided a strong endorsement of the market-reach benefits of the Abacus Best Available Rates programme and said they would substantially increase the range of rooms and locations available for booking through more than15,000 Abacus affiliated travel agency locations.

“Since its launch in June last year, Abacus BAR has created significant awareness amongst the travel agent community for our hotel partners, providing greater exposure of their best available rates which translate into more customers visiting their properties,” Mr Fong said.

Abacus BAR was developed in close collaboration with founding partner hotels which included InterContinental Hotel Group, Marriott International, Millennium & Copthorne International Ltd, Raffles International Hotels and Resorts and WORLDHOTELS.

Mr. Roland Jegge, Vice President, Asia Pacific of WORLDHOTELS pointed to both long and short term advantages of the chain’s partnership with Abacus BAR.

“Through being a foundation hotel partner of Abacus BAR, WORLDHOTELS has seen booking enquiries go from strength-to-strength as travel agents grow in confidence with the best available fares offered through the solution. By delivering incremental bookings Abacus BAR is directly impacting yields and delivering new first time customers which also has a longer term value for our brand,” Mr Jegge said.

Ms Agnes Battad – Director of Corporate Reservations and Distribution, Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts, said that reach of the solution throughout the Asia-Pacific region was a compelling factor in the brand’s move to participate in Abacus BAR.

“The Abacus BAR solution features all the key information for travel agents to quickly find the best priced accommodation to suit their travellers’ needs and the intensive reach into 15,000 locations in 24 Asian markets is particularly attractive,” Ms Battad said.

Over the past month, Abacus has observed an increasing interest from China in its Abacus Bar Programme. In the past month it has recorded large attendances of more than 180 travel agents at forums held in Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing in conjunction with Marriott, IHG, WORLDHOTELS, Langham, Mandarin Oriental, Meritus and several hotel brands not as yet represented by Abacus BAR.

Mr Fong said that the Abacus BAR programme has quickly established itself as trustworthy because all partner hotels have agreed on a common definition for rate parity for their respective Best Available Rates to be displayed in the Abacus system.

“Travel agents can be absolutely confident that Abacus BAR will find their customers the best available rate agreed and is backed with a guarantee to provide a best available rate for the particular stay dates and room type,” Mr Fong concluded.