Hotelbeds, a global booking platform that works with 60,000 travel professionals, has transformed itself in the last two years into a travel technology business, according to Lauren Atlass, commercial director-the Americas.
With headquarters in Mallorca, Spain and offices in Orlando and Cancun, Hotelbeds connects those travel sellers with 300,000 hotels, including connections to all major chains, and gets 4 billion searches per day on its platform. Hotelbeds, the parent company, works with tour operators, airlines and point redemption companies. A subsidiary brand – Bedsonline –works with travel advisors. Bedsonline, said Atlass, sells not only lodging but activities and transfers.
While the company has always had strong technology positions, said Atlass, over the past two years it has put innovation at the forefront of its business, which has allowed it to provide more data product spinoffs and financial technology (fintech) products. Using the company’s booking website and API (application programming interface), said Atlass, travel professionals can more easily find and book accommodations, transfers and experiences.
Demonstrating the technology focus, Hotelbeds just announced a new chatbot and hotel marketing suite to streamline the booking and inquiry process for travel advisors. According to an announcement, Olivia, Hotelbeds’ first artificial intelligence-based virtual assistant, is ready to provide direct guidance on a wide range of topics. With quick and easy answers to everyday questions, said the company, this solution is the latest in a series of self-service tools designed to support advisors.
Among its functionalities, Olivia can:
- Guide advisors through the Bedsonline booking engine, helping them to make and manage a booking, provide insights on how to use tools such as The Compass, how to send a quote, and much more
- Help advisors to register with Bedsonline and share details about the latest offers
- Support and help advisors with technical questions such as how to access the website, how to use its self-service tools, and even provide guidance for emergencies at a destination
On the marketing front, Hotelbeds’ Star Collection Program brings together its suite of marketing solutions in a way that gives hotel properties maximum exposure in the B2B marketplace while also equipping travel advisors with recommendations to help them make the best choice for their clients.
Both hotel partners and advisors now have access to the latest industry data. They can also enjoy new functionalities and improvements to the platform, including:
- Gaining real-time access to relevant destination information such as current weather and average prices
- Discovering minimum hotel prices
- Downloading relevant hotel information
- Creating customized marketing collateral, such as destination flyers, customizing them with the advisor’s branding or choosing the hotels to include
- Identifying special deals with hotels to spot the best rates
Designed to make it easy to offer fully personalized travel brochures to agents, the Star Brochure has gone digital in a completely new format making it, according to the company, “the ultimate marketing tool for attracting and retaining today’s travelers.”
One of the more impressive technologies that came out of the pandemic, said Atlass, was a business intelligence (BI) tool that puts useful data in the hands of travel professionals so they can in turn make recommendations to clients. “When you take the perspective of a global company that sees 4 billion searches a day, and give the data to travel advisors,” said Atlass, “ that’s powerful.”
The business intelligence tool, according to the company, combines the data with the advisor’s search and booking history and seasonality to provide advisors with tailored, relevant and timely offers.
Bedsonline claims on its website to have the most powerful booking engine for travel advisors, with 70% of clients saying the simplicity of the platform is the top reason they use it. Exclusive rates and offers, according to the company, are only available for travel agent partners and cannot be accessed by anyone else.
Atlass claims that Bedsonline offers the best advisor commission structure in the U.S., though those payments do depend on volume and other factors. One reason for the “healthy” commissions, she said, is that the company works directly with hotels.
With its enhanced technology, said Atlass, Bedsonline enables travel professionals to customize commissions so they might include a service fee. It also provides the ability to build and customize marketing tools using the advisor’s logo. A chatbot helps advisors accomplish tasks with flexibility – on their own time and in their own way.
A commission calculator was launched 12 months ago to provide greater flexibility to travel advisors. According to Atlass, it's a self-managed online tool that enables agents to offer dynamic pricing to increase their competitiveness.
All advisors have account managers who work remotely so there is always one located near the travel professional to help from a commercial and training standpoint. The account managers also conduct regular webinars that frequently include a giveaway. Webinars involve product education as well as getting the most out of Bedsonline as far as efficiency and maximizing commissions.
Also of interest to advisors, said Atlass, is that the company is seeing a trend toward more luxury and has “unique partnerships” with brands like Leading Hotels of the World and Kempinski Hotels.
Looking ahead, said Atlass, Hotelbeds is seeking to create “frictionless travel” through technology. She said the company is keeping the idea of the connected trip in mind as it brings travel ecosystems together to make bookings less stressful. “While we continue to be a B2B company,” she said, “we always want to keep the end user client in mind.”
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