UK remains company/s most important outbound market worldwide; Spain top inbound country for UK travellers, followed by the USA, Greece, Italy and Portugal.
LONDON – Hotelbeds Group, the business-to-business provider of services to the travel industry globally, announces that it recorded strong sales growth during 2015 / 16 from its UK source market. Additionally, this growth maintained the company/s track record for outperforming the local market, which overall during 2015 / 16 experienced a moderate decrease.
The UK remained unchanged as the most important source market worldwide for Hotelbeds Group, where the company offers UK intermediaries access to over 100,000 hotels, 19,000 transfers and 12,000 activities available in over 180 destinations globally.
Carlos Munoz, Bedbank Managing Director at Hotelbeds Group commented: “Despite fierce competition in a market that shrunk this year, it gives me great pleasure to confirm that once again we have both grown significantly and outperformed in our most important outbound market. First of all I/d like to thank our partners in the market for their faith, loyalty and partnership this last year to make this happen. Second of all I/d like to thank the UK team for their tireless hard work in providing best in class service delivery. In 2017 we/ll be even more committed to our investment in cost-effective technology that generates additional revenues for our partners.”
As a destination for UK travellers, Spain was the top country during the 2015 / 2016 financial year, followed by the USA, Greece, Italy and Portugal. The fastest growing destinations for UK travellers were Spain, USA, Portugal, UAE and Mexico. By contrast, Turkey, France and Morocco were the destinations that experienced the greatest decrease compared to the previous year.
The company aims to further grow its leading position with a focus on driving the development of its differentiated product offer as well as continuing to invest in technology and innovation, with special efforts on data and analytics in order to better predict and react to changes in customer demand while optimising client service.
Hotelbeds Group innovates with launch of APItude Cloud
Hotelbeds Group also launched APItude Cloud – a cloud-based version of the API connectivity suite launched by Hotelbeds at last year´s World Travel Market.
APItude Cloud has been created as a phase-two response to high customer demand for APItude and anticipates the need of customers for faster response times delivered via the decentralized server structure offered by the cloud – with servers for Asia and the Americas to be launched by late 2017.
Additionally APItude has incorporated new functionalities in the BookingAPI, and the ContentAPI. These will include booking modifications, more advanced filters to help clients find exactly what they need, the introduction of e-Vouchers, and an updated hotels list in order to further enhance the developer experience.
Sam Turner, Bedbank Sales Director at Hotelbeds Group, commented: “We are really excited to already be entering into this second phase with APItude following great demand and feedback from customers since launching only a year ago this week. Not only can we now offer faster response times via the cloud, we´ve also increased functionalities such as booking modifications, more advanced filters and the introduction of e-Vouchers. This step forward will help us to continue focusing on what OTAs and Tour Operators demand: simplicity. For anyone who would like to find out more please come to our launch party where we will be serving cocktail drinks this evening at World Travel Market (GV515 Stand).”
APItude is the fastest and lightest hotel distribution API in the market. It enhances the developer experience by making the integration process easier, faster and more intuitive – allowing partners to develop their own travel website or mobile app using Hotelbeds’ product portfolio more easily than ever before. Via the app partners gain access to over 100,000 hotels, 19,000 transfer routes and 12,000 activities offered by Hotelbeds Group in a simple and agile way.
The launch of APItude Cloud is the latest element in Hotelbeds Group´s commitment to innovation. It continues the company´s quest to simplify the B2B distribution of accommodation across the entire travel value chain. Under the banner “we love simple”, Hotelbeds aspires to adapt all aspects of its product and service delivery to meet the needs of its varied customer base of 35,000 intermediaries from across the 120+ source markets where it operates worldwide.
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