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Who said that women can’t code? Clearly no one told this to Ada Lovelace (a Countess, no less), when she wrote the world´s first computer programme nearly 180 years ago.

But despite some high-profile examples of women in IT currently, such as &nbsp;Marissa Mayer of Yahoo!, sadly it does seem many wrongly perceive programming as career for men only.

At Hotelbeds Group we couldn´t disagree more. And that’s why tech gurus from our Technology team in Palma - Alicia Ropero, Silvia Cobo and Isabel Cazorla- attended last week in the Django Girls Palma initiative in Mallorca, which aimed to help women make their first steps in the world of programming,

All the three ladies took part in the workshop as coaches to share their expertise with the ´aspiring coders´ to help guide them step-by-step on how to develop their first website.

The result? This Django Girls initiative was the most successful in Spain so far! More than 55 participants, 20 mentors – both male and female – attended to bring programming closer to a female audience. Marisa Ocon, Product Management’s Chief of Staff (Process &amp; Cadence) also visited the workshop to support the initiative and get to meet the coders in action.

Attendees came out of the session with an elaborated website and (even more important!) with the conviction that they could continue learning this newly introduced skill!


In the words of our technology team, the challenge was “to be able to explain our day-to-day job in technology in a language suitable to all levels of knowledge” and the benefit was that “it was a great learning experience for us too!”.


Django Girls is a UK-based non-profit organization and a community that works globally to empower and help women to organize free, one-day programming workshops by providing tools, resources and support. It is a volunteer-run organization with hundreds of people contributing to bringing more amazing women into the world of technology. During each of their events, between 30 and 60 women build their first web application using programming languages such as HTML, CSS, Python and Django.

To find out more about Django Girls, or if there´s an event happening near to you, click here visit their website.





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Women's 'code' of conduct: Hotelbeds Group supports Django Girls Palma

Twenty-four hours of non-stop hacking. No sleep. No rest. Just endless coding until the very last second.


For the very first time Hotelbeds Group is holding a hackathon – a sprint-style event for computer programmers and software architects to collaborate on an IT challenge, sometime also called a codefest&nbsp; &nbsp;– in its Palma de Mallorca global head office.


Taking place in the 24 hours from 4pm on Thursday 22 of February until 4pm the next day, the event will be called Hack@Travel. Some of the best up-and-coming talent in the industry will come together to test their tech skills and tackle the IT challenges faced by our sector. This exciting event is jointly sponsored by Hotelbeds Group in conjunction with the University of the Balearic Island (UIB), our local leading university here in Mallorca, and forms part of an ongoing partnership for tourism innovation agreed between Hotelbeds Group and UIB&nbsp;back in 2015.

Participants will be divided into groups and will compete with each other over 24 hours to create new value propositions and identify untapped travel industry opportunities. This will be done using the Hotelbeds hotel distribution API, APItude – the fastest and lightest hotel distribution API in the market – and when the clock runs out they´ll present their projects to an independent judging panel.

This unique opportunity to gain hands-on experience for the contestants forms part of Hotelbeds Group´s commitment to reshaping travel through technological innovation.

The winners will be announced on the afternoon of Friday 23th of February – watch this space!

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Code Hard. Party Hard: Group´s Palma head office hosts first hackathon

What´s the biggest challenge for a European or North American hotel chain attracting Chinese travelers: language barrier or cultural differences? This Friday China celebrates the Year of the Dog and perhaps hoteliers should instead be giving more thought to another problem: technology.

But how can it be that technology, something that should be relatively unaffected by language or culture, could be anything other than a solution? &nbsp;What are hoteliers doing wrong to make a solution become a problem? &nbsp;The answer is that they are not embracing the technologies used by Chinese travelers.

In many respects China is much more digitally advanced than Europe or America. For example mobile Apps are commonly used to unlock doors in hotels and offices; and across many Chinese cities you can even use an App to locate a bicycle, unlock it and ride off – then dump it wherever and whenever you´ve finished.&nbsp; QR codes are absolutely everywhere and used for absolutely everything, even on business cards and lunch menus.

All of this makes expectations very high for Chinese travelers – and leads to immediate disappointment and frustration. Imagine how lost you´d be if all of your Apps on your phone stopped working when you´re on holiday or a business trip, in an unfamiliar place, where no one speaks your language? That´s how the average Chinese traveler feels on touchdown at Heathrow or JFK. And when they can´t withdraw cash at the ATM, their frustration is probably reaching boiling point.

Let´s start with something very obvious but hugely important: payments. They are used to paying for everything virtually using their mobile phone; from a taxi ride to a restaurant bill to giving their children their pocket money, it’s all about WeChat and AliPay. For the young, credit and debit cards are hardly used. And for those Chinese travelers that still use credit cards, few of them have Visa or Mastercard. Instead mostly have Union Pay, which many European retailers still don´t accept.


The core of the problem stems from the fact that the technology platforms they are used to using are all entirely different from ours. They can´t access Google, Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or even WhatsApp; instead they use three main social media channels: Baidu (a search engine), WeChat (WhatsApp on steroids) and Weibo (similar to Twitter). And they don´t have Uber anymore, instead they use something called Didi.


This creates two headaches for hotels looking to welcome Chinese travelers. Firstly how to market to them; and secondly for customer services via social media. In both cases this doesn´t just mean working in the Chinese language, it has to be on their social media channels too – which aren´t always so easy to set-up, as in some cases to start an official account you need to be a registered company in China.

For us at Hotelbeds Group we´ve been deeply involved in the Chinese market for many years and already it is our fifth biggest source market globally. We´ve achieved this in part by embracing these technology changes and working with our hotel supplier partners to help them adjust their offering accordingly.

These are concerns that these challenges will only get worse as Chinese travelers begin to travel less in groups and on pre-paid package trips, and instead travel alone – a trend which Japanese travelers followed from the 1980s onwards. Technology should be an enabler of this, and right now it is not in many cases.

This year of the dog shouldn´t have to be a dog of a year if hotels embrace the technology needs of Chinese travelers. If they work on this weakness, then the upcoming 2019 Year of the Pig could allow the forward-thinking to bring home the bacon. &nbsp;&nbsp;

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Chinese technology should give hoteliers paws for thought this Year of the Dog 

Apart from your hotel, what else do you need when you arrive in your destination? You might want to let us know, because across our Group it is likely that we have it already. Theatre tickets? Check. Theme parks? Check. Excursions? Check. Car rentals? Check. Transfers? Check.

But what if you have higher expectations, literally? Hotelbeds Group is very pleased to announce that its Transfer &amp; Activity Bank (TAB) has integrated Papillon, a tour operator that offers helicopter and aircraft tours in the USA.

The maximum sightseeing experience? Check! Papillon specialises in flying over one of the natural wonders of the World, the Grand Canyon: the Hoover Dam, Lake Mead, Monument Valley and Lake Powell among others amazing places.

Yes, now your customers can experience tours in specially-designed planes and helicopters in some of the most breath-taking places on earth.

Based in Las Vegas, Papillon flies over 600,000 passengers each year on daily tours with aircraft designed for sightseeing with onboard upgrades, large windows and raised wings so the view is never obstructed. All experiences offer pre-recorded narration in 16 languages provided through noise-cancelling headphones.

Las Vegas is a city full of activities potential where Hotelbeds Group is growing strongly. This forms part of our commitment to increase and diversify, at the best prices and under the most exclusive terms, our ancillaries offering to our customer base of over 60,000 travel sellers worldwide.

Papillon joining our distribution network is part of a wider trend we are seeing for in-destination tourism providers to enter the digital age. Such integrations into our platform provide real time product availability and real time rates, enabling the provider to dynamically price their services and maximise returns. It also helps to improve the daily operational processes of the provider through improved resources planning, for example via real-time booking confirmation/cancellation thanks to API connectivity. This also improves the end customer experience, leaving everybody happy.

Every year travellers spend well over $100 billion on in-destination experiences such as tours and activities. Our objective is to help in-destination tourism providers access those travellers before they arrive at their destination. In this fast growing market we feel that for all our partners, and not just those offering air tours, the sky is the limit.

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Aircraft aren't just for arriving – planes and helicopters make the sky the limit for in-destination experiences

What is the one and only thing you want to do when you have a customer service issue? Speak with someone by telephone, right away. &nbsp;So an engaged line doesn´t sound like your ideal option, but think again.


Despite all the marvelous technical evolutions such as self-service, automated-channels with cognitive tools, chatbots and more, ultimately contact center agents are still key for customers. People trust the human connection and real living, breathing call center agents are essential to an excellent customer experience.


Whilst many companies are working on how to achieve ´Customer Excellence´ via this channel, they fail to take into consideration that customer service success is directly linked to employee engagement: happy employees make happy customers.

And guess what? If employees do not feel engaged, you are probably already offering a poor service – the line might as well be busy. Instead what you want is a line that is answered by staff who are engaged.

Here are some tips to promote employee engagement in contact centers and ensure customers get the best experience possible:


	Establish the right competency framework to ensure that you are matching current and future employees to the positions that best fit with their skills. This helps avoid lack of motivation and frustration, and promotes their confidence to enable them to deliver the best service.
	Empower contact center employees and give them clear principles (more than giving them strict rules) and authorization levels to discuss with clients. In that manner, agents will feel valued by the company and more clearly understand the company value proposition for clients.
	Offer employees the best work environment. This is not only about ergonomic chairs and good office equipment. This is also about providing employees with the right training, user-friendly tools, clear and humanized communications and support from supervisors; it is also about offering clear rules for professional career development and opportunities, as well as managing expectations honestly, transparently and objectively.
	Give competitive, living-wage salaries that are accompanied by a comprehensive range of benefits such as healthcare. There should also be an attractive incentives program to make sure that employees are fairly recognized and rewarded. Companies should provide dignity to the role of a contact center agent, whilst also promoting productivity improvements based on incentives.


All these tips will help companies to retain the best and most talented agents – and we´ve been following these for several years now at Hotelbeds Group across 9 hubs globally, who together cover 20 languages, 24 hours a day.

By motivating staff to do their best and improving the customer experience, the investment is already paying dividends.

And if you don´t do this? Despite having a real person on the other end of the line, your customers may end up with the impression that they are speaking with a robot anyway.


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Who wants a call center line that is engaged 24 hours a day? 

Walking the floor of any travel industry trade show over the last 18 months you may have noticed that many of the stands have some kind of virtual reality (VR) display. If you´ll excuse the pun, people are literally tripping over themselves in the process.

But when will virtual reality become a profitable reality for the travel industry? The truth is that virtually nobody knows for sure. It is not yet well enough developed to consider it a key technology for the travel industry (certainly not for the B2B sector anyway) – but will it become one in 2018?

This is a technology that has existed for years. In fact we have recently seen a significant shift in the development of new products and devices. But the high cost of developing specific content, the need for expensive devices and the lack of a clear business model has slowed its arrival in the travel market. This explains the distinct lack of the development of new products and services specifically for our sector.

By contrast, the video-gaming sector is one of the few that has been able to find a route to monetizing this technology. &nbsp;By providing players with immersive environments and differential gaming experiences, they´ve taken video-gaming to another level – and gamers are prepared to pay for that.

In the travel sector, the path is less clear: people won´t pay for a 3D experience of a holiday any more than they´d pay for a holiday brochure. Nonetheless, despite the lack of a direct and obvious profitable purpose there are still remarkable potential applications for the travel sector:


	To provide a traveler with an immersive trip to a destination to experience all the possibilities that it can offer, including views and weather conditions, from the travel agency office or even from traveler´s own sofa.
	To take a tour inside a cruise ship, visiting the cabins or public spaces and enjoying the activities, in order to experience the trip before booking.
	To move around inside a hotel, visiting its different types of rooms, with the aim of having more information with which to make a purchase decision.
	To configure and arrange the set-up of a hotel room, or other travel experience, such as selecting the particular room, bed type, linen, extra activities and more simply by selecting them as they walk through the experience.
	To enjoy the thrill of a potential theme park ride or outdoors activity such as white-water rafting or parachute jumping in order to entice customers to sign-up for activities ahead of arriving in the destination.
	To assist in guided tours and educational activities, such as comparing how a place looked in a previous historical period or could look in the future.


Clearly the possibilities for the travel industry are huge, but perhaps only once use becomes so widespread that VR goes from being a nice-to-have gimmick to an absolute essential – in the same way that having a company website started to become essential in the early millennium – will all travel businesses roll-out use of VR in their points of sale.

On that basis, VR might not ever become any more profitable than a laptop computer or smart phone: two devices no CFO expects to be profitable, but nonetheless doesn´t question the logic of the company purchasing.

No doubt this will happen in time, but when, where and how is far from being a virtual reality yet.

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When will virtual reality become a profitable reality? 

Management theorist Peter Drucker famously said that “the best way to predict the future is to create it”. Last week at Fitur a lot of exhibitors were very busy doing just that.

With the number of technology exhibitors up by 16% and the Fitur Tech area expanded to four stages, it seems the future of travel technology is no longer what it used to be – in a good sense.

The themes were as endless as they were inspirational: instant translation software, facial recognition profiling, cyborgs and implanted technology, chatbots, voice search, virtual and augmented reality. Apparently we´ll even see the introduction of 5G phone networks soon.

This is without mentioning the terms that are already referenced so frequently that we all feel we know them: blockchain, artificial intelligence and, the most abused term, Big Data. But does the average travel executive have much of an idea what they really mean? Or how they´ll impact our industry really?

The most important question to ask is how soon are any of these technologies likely to impact our businesses?&nbsp; Sadly the time lag between invention and implementation is also matched by the amount of time it takes for industry-wide uptake. At Hotelbeds Group we noticed this with regards to voice search: at a panel we hosted at World Travel Market in November we asked the audience who has used Apple´s Siri or Amazon´s Echo to actually try and book a flight or hotel. The answer? Not one of the 200 people in the audience raised their hand.

Despite the impression that gatherings of travel technologists give, it seems that we´re not quite yet living in the future. Given that we now have a privileged position of what it might look like, this gives us a perhaps unique opportunity to prepare for it. Five years from now can any hotel chain have a decent excuse as to why it doesn´t automatically charge your Bitcoin account based on facial recognition technology as you check-out by simply walking out the door? Or why the concierge doesn´t understand every known language via an instant translation software tool?

Nonetheless, some rather obvious but boring barriers need to be lifted very soon to help the travel industry maximize its potential. For example, the irony that Wi-Fi coverage was lacking – along with only a handful of ´recharging stations´, that each had literally only six plug sockets –&nbsp; in the IFEMA building last week did not go unnoticed.

This is something that we´ve all experienced in many tourist locations and on business trips. It´s not a sexy topic or worthy of a key note speech, but only once all travelers are able to connect and recharge everywhere, including onboard an airplane, will the travel industry start to reap the full benefits of change.

Peter Drucker died in 2005, but if he were alive today he might have also noted that the future might as well be the past if you don´t have Wi-Fi and connection to a power source.&nbsp;


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The future of travel technology is better than it used to be – but perhaps further away too 

For another consecutive year, Hotelbeds Group maintained its reputation for celebrating Fitur in style with its partners.

Every year Fitur brings together all the leaders of the Spanish travel industry, with thousands of exhibiting travel &amp; tourism companies, government institutions and tourism boards from across the globe.

In addition to having a strong presence at the trade fair, we like to bring together our leading partners from across the Group outside of the convention for private parties. Each year we throw two main parties: one for Hotelbeds, our wholesaler brand that focuses on OTAs, tour operators, re-sellers and airlines, and one for the Bedsonline brand, which is focused on travel agencies. The goal? To thank all of them for a year full of success and strengthen further the relationship.

On the Wednesday evening a cocktail party was hosted by Hotelbeds at Opium Madrid, perhaps the city´s most exclusive night club, bringing together more than 450 hotel partners alongside journalists from leading travel trade media. Sam Turner, Hotelbeds Group’s Director of Wholesale Sales &amp; Sourcing, gave a speech thanking guests for their continued partnership and the party continued into the early hours of the morning thanks to a live band.

Bedsonline also organized a special event to thank its top clients for another successful year. This took place on the Thursday in the restaurant of the chic Ramses bar, located next to the Puerta de Alcalá in Madrid´s sophisticated Barrio Salamanca. More than 200 senior executives from Spain´s leading travel agencies and selected invited media enjoyed the haute cuisine of Ramses before moving onto the dance floor in the private bar upstairs into the early hours.

Both events were mentioned by the media, including Preferente who listed the Hotelbeds party as one of the most exclusive of the whole week at Fitur.

With expectations so high, planning for 2019´s events will start soon. See you next year!









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Hotelbeds Group celebrates another successful Fitur

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak´s current advert for Vodafone sees him talking about the transformative impact of technology on all of our lives, stating “we are now absolutely the kings of a better world”. But what will be the impact of travel technology on our lives in 2018?

Travelers booking their holidays online today really do expect to be ´kings´. They expect a simple, fast and user-friendly experience that covers all the available options whenever and wherever they search, book and pay for a hotel or an activity.

But if there is one thing that develops quicker than technology, it is the expectations that we have of what technology should be able to do.



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And in 2018 we´ll be expecting a more personalized and predictive service. Here are a list of the five key technologies to keep an eye on this year to understand how the industry is going to meet that challenge:

Artificial Intelligence (AI): this is now a reality. AI organizes and makes sense of large amounts of data and responses are already quicker and more efficient. Voice search or bots are good examples of how far personalization could go.

Voice Search: this is likely to be greatly improved this year through devices such as Google´s Home or Amazon´s Alexa. Voice Search is, as mentioned before, an application of AI. When you do a voice search, an accurate and personalized response is required to give you the most relevant information.&nbsp; This is when AI and data analytics are crucial in order to provide you with the information needed in milliseconds.

Machine learning: as the name suggests, this is about making systems learn automatically and predict patterns of behavior. Whilst this is an application of AI, its key role is prediction science.

Cloud computing: apart from the evident advantages of storing information on remote servers – such as saving space and providing a safe back-up – cloud computing also offers a reduction of costs, more scalability and flexibility. All good solutions for efficient company growth.

Robotics Process Automation (RPA): the digital age introduces a future in which people will interact continuously with robots (both knowingly, and unknowingly).&nbsp; RPA solutions learn from business users and assist with simple and repetitive tasks such as transactional activities – these will make workers much more efficient.

In the same Vodafone advert Steve Wozniak also recognizes that “we´re all just beginners in the digital world” and refers to himself as an “intern”. By pushing the boundaries of these five technologies during 2018 could the travel industry perhaps hope to keep one step ahead? The journey starts here.

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The travel technology journey: five areas to watch in 2018 

We all know that the direct Vs indirect debate will never have a fairy tale ending for either the hotels or the intermediaries. But nonetheless this plotline is continually evolving and always introducing new characters, both heroes and villains.&nbsp; Maybe this time we are about to witness a different ending?

One thing hasn´t changed though: watching the various interested parties debate this live makes for great entertainment.&nbsp; Delegates at last month´s Phocuswright got a taste of this when our own Joan Vilà took to the stage for the ´Accomodation Upended´ debate – hosted by Phocuswright´s Lorraine Sileo and accompanied by Patrick Bosworth from Duetto, Sam Shank from HotelTonight, and Tammy Peter from Wyndham. To watch the full video click here.

It seems certain that we are about to see the entrance of two new characters onto the stage. When the panelists were asked who poses more of a threat as a potential distribution channel in the future, Facebook or Amazon, the result was three to one in Amazon´s favour (or against, depending upon how you interpret that!).

Whichever poses the greater threat, the reality it would seem is that both have enormous potential to transform travel. Facebook is omnipresent and has huge ability to influence us all; and Amazon´s big data analytics enables them to understand and predict all our needs. What hotel chain doesn´t need both of these qualities as part of their storyline?

Remarkably one of the biggest new controversial stars of the travel industry, Airbnb, doesn´t seem to be eclipsing what many consider the biggest threat: Expedia.&nbsp; All four panelists felt that Expedia still poses a greater threat to hotels than Airbnb, despite all of the concerns (and endless column inches) about the revolutionary impact of the Airbnb threat to hotels.

Despite the push that hotels have made in the last few years to gain more sales in the direct channel, with campaigns such as Hilton´s ´Stop clicking around´, the average proportion of direct sales has remained for decades roughly stable at around 50%. Hotels have been unsuccessful in persuading travelers to download their apps compared to the online travel agencies (OTAs) – according to Joan with the latter outstripping the former by a rate of five to one.

This might be because perhaps the biggest actor to enter the direct Vs indirect plotline has gone unnoticed by many: the traveler. Modern audiences are used to multi-channel access for everything and want the same for their hotel content. If this were a fairy tale, convenience and the consumer would arguably be the King &amp; Queen and it is just possible that they might live happily ever after.&nbsp;


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It might not be a fairy tale, but are we about to see a new plotline in the Direct Vs indirect story?

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If you believed the rumours that Santa would deliver Christmas presents via blockchain this year, you´ll be disappointed. He doesn´t even have email yet. In fact, writing to Santa is more tricky than it looks. You´ve listed your good deeds done and described your ideal presents, but where do you post the letter to?


Finns believe he lives in Lapland, Americans in Alaska, and Russians (who believe in ´Ded Maroz´, a kind of communist Santa) in Vologoda. Besides, in our Group headquarters in Spain no one even writes to Santa, instead they write to the Three Kings (Los Reyes Magos) via a post box in our local department store.


Needless to say, in non-Christian countries Christmas is not celebrated: it´s just another working day in India, Indonesia and Israel. As a company with over 200 offices and 8,500 employees around the globe offering a 24-hour a day service, we embrace such cultural differences on a daily basis. So if you´re a customer of ours, rest assured that our call centre in destination support line will be open on Christmas Day.


But is there anything that we do all have in common at this time of year? As we count down to 31st December, even if we don´t jot them down in a letter to Santa, one way or another we´re all mentally reviewing the year´s highlights.


For us at Hotelbeds Group this year has brought some rather memorable moments: Tourico Holidays and GTA have joined our Group; our platform now has over 170,000 hotels and handles peaks of up to 1.5 billion searches a day; China became our fifth biggest source market globally; airline ancillary sales continued to grow strongly, as did car rentals; and we hosted not one by two MarketHubs, Cancun and Bangkok, for our top clients.

There´s something else too that many of us have in common at this time of year: it´s a time to think about giving something back. This holiday season for every corporate Christmas gift we´d have given away, instead we´ll make a donation to Le Passage Travel Foundation – Shaping Lives. Its ‘No Child in Trash’ program supports the children of waste pickers living in New Delhi. Each donation enables a child to receive one month’s informal learning and food.

There´s also something else we have in common: thinking about what the year ahead has in store for us, our families and our work. Whilst we are very proud of our achievements, the truth is we are even more excited about the many challenges that lay ahead: our campaign to contract directly 10,000 more hotels; figuring out how to make artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and blockchain work for our partners; widening our cross-selling initiatives as part of the Tourico Holidays and GTA integration into our Group; and keeping up with the pace of Asia Pacific´s phenomenal growth.

Once again we´d like to thank all our commercial partners across the globe for the faith they place in our business. Wherever you are, whether you celebrate the holidays or not, we hope that Santa, the Three Kings, Ded Maroz or whomever you cherish brings you everything you truly deserve in 2018.&nbsp;



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Newsflash: Santa will not use blockchain to deliver gifts this holiday season  

What would you give to remove 14 years and four months of hard slog from your current to-do list? That´s how long it would take a hotel sales manager to meet with 60,000 travel seller intermediaries.&nbsp; That is assuming they spent just 30 minutes with each person, worked 8 hours a day five days a week, and had no holidays, sick leave or even comfort breaks. Oh, and instantly transported themselves from meeting to meeting (or relied on Skype, a risky option).

At Hotelbeds Group we have reduced those 14 years and four months of work down to milliseconds by giving hotels access to a giant community of travel sellers globally. And since Tourico Holidays and GTA started their integration into Hotelbeds Group, the number of travel sellers using the platform has increased to over 60,000. Not only is this a big increase from the previous 35,000 customers, but additionally the range of source markets has widened – with greater presence in North America and Asia Pacific.

These 60,000 customers can access hotels via the platform every single second, all day every day. In total these customers make up to 1.5 billion searches a day. Aside from the fact that a hotel sales manager couldn´t really meet 60,000 people and have a 100% success rate, there are other factors that would make it almost impossible: for example they´d need to speak every language and have a super slick (and quick!) contracting process. And that´s assuming their hotel can handle payments in any currency, has a robust inventory platform in place, and so on.

Collectively the total amount of customers connecting to the Group´s bedbank via the wholesale channel – the online travel agencies (OTAs), tour operators, B2B re-sellers (who in turn sell onto other intermediaries), and airlines – now numbers around 7,000. The rest of the over 60,000 customers are made up of travel agents, ranging from one-man-bands right up to some leading chains such as Viajes El Corte Inglés in Spain.

Whilst Tourico Holidays and GTA currently remain independent businesses within Hotelbeds Group, already their integration is well underway. Most relevant from a hotel partner or travel intermediary perspective is that cross selling has already begun. Tourico Holidays and Hotelbeds started in the early autumn; and in December GTA´s hotels also started to become available to the rest of the Group´s brands. With more than 170,000 hotels available on the Group´s bedbank platform, many of them contacted directly, that represents a lot of cross-selling potential.

To read more of the latest news about our integration see yesterdya´s press release (here) about our plans to increase the number of directly contracted hotels by 10,000 over the coming years and how we´ll go about this by recruiting around 200 new professionals in our Yield and Contracting teams globally.&nbsp;

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