Small Luxury Hotels of the World welcomes 2006 with open arms as the luxury brand of independent hotels realised a 21% increase in reservations revenue for the first quarter over the same period last year indicating a…
Small Luxury Hotels of the World welcomes 2006 with open arms as the luxury brand of independent hotels realised a 21% increase in reservations revenue for the first quarter over the same period last year indicating a prosperous year ahead. Now boasting a collection of over 360 of the finest hotels in 60 countries, reservations through SLH jumped 29% in the first quarter compared to last year, due much to the increase in reservations through the GDS and slh.com.
Travel agents continue to play a large part in SLH`s success as bookings through the GDS increased more than 20% over last year as did bookings through SLH`s award-winning website, slh. In addition to slh site, Small Luxury Hotels of the World now provides its member hotels an Internet Booking Engine powered by TRUST on their individual hotel websites that drives significant reservation revenue through the SLH system.
Our ability to utilise the Internet to drive reservations through the brand while still delivering member hotels the highest yield possible has proven to be quite a successful strategy for the brand, commented Paul Kerr, Joint Managing Director of SLH.
As a result of SLH`s additional distribution through Pegasus ODD, guests are now booking full published rates through consumer travel websites such as Expedia and Orbitz delivering higher revenue to the individual hotels compared to the traditional discounted Merchant Models.
Geographically, some trends continued into the first quarter from previous months as hotels within the Unites States, UK and France received the majority of the brand`s total reservations, predominately from American travellers. However, in contrast reservations at the SLH hotels in Ireland jumped 40% to start the year, showing a renewed interest in the Emerald Isle Although travel to Italy was fairly flat overall in the first quarter, hotels in Florence stood out as they showed nearly 10% growth over last year. As can be expected, the majority of travellers during the first three months of the year flocked to hotels in warm weather spots like Florida, Arizona and the Dominican Republic.
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