by Donald Wood
Last updated: 12:35 AM ET, Thu October 18, 2018
WHY IT RATES: Travel agents should be taking note of the changes happening behind the scenes with TravelBound and Bedsonline.-Donald Wood, Breaking News Senior Writer.
TravelBound, one of the leading suppliers of FIT travel to destinations worldwide, exclusively serving the travel community in North America, has announced the launch of its new enhanced offering to travel advisors by joining alliances with Bedsonline.
Following the integration of GTA and Tourico Holidays into its parent Group, TravelBound customers are now able to benefit from an exclusive and significantly enhanced product portfolio of hotels, a significant proportion of which are directly contracted, enhanced commercials for agents with standardization of commission structure, and a platform specifically designed to drive growth in the highly competitive travel retail space.
After extensive consultation with clients, it has therefore been decided that TravelBound, the retail brand of GTA, will progressively rebrand under the Bedsonline name and shift over to the Bedsonline booking platform.
As part of this change, a migration plan will begin shortly to educate TravelBound clients about the benefits of moving onto Bedsonline's booking platform.
The newly enhanced Bedsonline platform, powered by TravelBound, now offers travel advisors globally the following benefits:
-Diverse and competitive product portfolio: over 170,000 hotels globally available (with over 90,000 of those directly sourced, making the content both unique and competitively priced, and with better filters to navigate the inventory online), 24,000 transfer routes and 18,000 activities.
-Powerful and user-friendly technology: best-in-class search engine designed specifically for the needs of travel advisors allows users to filter and compare results in a flexible and practical way, including intuitive email, enhanced vouchers, and PDF functions - 70% of existing customers cite the platform as a top factor in choosing the service. Bedsonline's parent Group is the only distributor to operate its own cloud-based, open source data center and handles up to 1.5 billion searches per day.
-Local knowledge combined with a global offering: increased sales team support to front-line offices across North America with industry know-how ready to take care of all the needs of customers.
When put together, Bedsonline offers customers a 360-degree offering that is customer-centric and helps travel partners compete by offering unrivaled technology, the most competitive commercial terms, swift problem resolution, and expert team support.
The newly revised customer offering will be accompanied by a global brand refresh for Bedsonline that will include a new logo and brand identity.
Additionally, the sales team will kick off a campaign to introduce customers - both existing Bedsonline customers and those moving over from TravelBound - to this newly revised offering through sales meetings, presentations, and webinars, details of which will be published soon.
TravelBound customers will have sufficient time to transition at their own pace and both workshops and technical support will be on hand to support a seamless migration.
James Phillips, Director, Retail Travel Agents AMPAC at Hotelbeds Group, comments: "We anticipate that by the end of the year, we'll have most of the integration work completed on the Bedsonline platform so that customers may experience the fully integrated product. The platform comes with a number of benefits: intuitive search and filtering functionality, an increased amount of content, and will solve the voucher issues we have heard over the years."
"Additionally, we're standardizing our commission structure on the Bedsonline platform, offering our partners true earning opportunities as opposed to the tiered approach that existed before. Just as important, our customers will have richer sales support in large part due to the opportunities the integration has offered."
Tommy Ryder, Head of Sales, Regional Manager, Bedsonline | TravelBound, comments: "We remain 100% committed to the travel advisor community. We have focused our efforts on retaining much of what is loved from TravelBound and combining that with Bedsonline's world-class technology. Our travel partners can expect an increased focus on training and education efforts, in person and virtually, as we help them navigate the tools that will help do what they do best - sell travel."
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