GTA's retail arm joins forces with Bedsonline to establish the leading global platform for travel agents

• Move combines GTA’s retail product portfolio with Bedsonline to provide a significantly enlarged range of exclusively contracted content – increasing from 55,000 to 170,000 the number of hotels available.
• Best-in-class functionalities of GTA’s booking platform to be incorporated into Bedsonline ‘market leading’ offering.

Dubai, United Arab Emirates:– The parent company of both GTA and Bedsonline has today announced that it will consolidate its retail product portfolio and offering globally under the newly refreshed Bedsonline brand and platform – establishing the world’s leading provider of accommodation and complementary services designed exclusively for travel agents.  

Following extensive consultation with customers it has been decided that the GTA retail brand[1] will progressively rebrand under Bedsonline, the retail travel agency brand of parent group, Hotelbeds Group.

As part of this change a migration plan will begin shortly to speak with the customers of the GTA retail brand about the benefits of moving onto Bedsonline’s booking platform – where the combination of the GTA retail brand’s content will increase from 55,000 to 170,000 the number of hotels available to customers.

This strategic milestone follows Tourico Holidays and GTA – along with its retail brands TravelBound and TravelCube – joining Hotelbeds Group in 2017. 

An extensive outreach programme is already underway to inform all existing clients of GTA’s retail brand about the changes. Clients 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.

Following the consolidation of GTA’s retail brands’ product portfolio and offering, the Bedsonline platform will be able to offer travel agents globally the following benefits:

1. 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), 24,000 transfer routes and 18,000 activities, PLUS 140,000 cars available for hire – all sourced by a team of over 1,000 contractors globally.
2. Powerful and user-friendly technology: best-in-class search engine designed specifically for the needs of travel agents allows users to filter and compare results in a flexible and practical way, including intuitive email 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 centre and handles up to 1.5 billion searches per day.
3. Local knowledge combined with a global offering: local sales teams in every market with significant local knowledge and industry know-how ready to take care of all the needs of customers.

When put together, Bedsonline offers customers a 360-degree travel partner offering that is customer centric and helps partners compete by offering unrivalled technology, the most competitive commercial terms, swift problem resolution and expert team support.

Carlos Muñoz, Managing Director Bedbank at Hotelbeds Group explains: “It makes strategic and practical sense for us to continue to develop our travel agent proposition under one integrated, global platform and brand. The benefits from this move will help all our partners boost revenues and profits through improved functionality, an enlarged portfolio of directly sourced and exclusive hotel content, and increased opportunities to upsell high-yielding complimentary travel services in addition to our accommodation offering.”

Alistair Rodger, Director of Retail Travel Agents at Hotelbeds Group, comments: “Since starting in this role almost one year ago I’ve been consulting endlessly with our travel agent customers all around the globe. Time and again the feedback about the Bedsonline platform has made taking this decision easy – due to its superior functionality – but we’re looking to continue to improve the experience still further, beyond the booking platform itself, by establishing a truly 360-degree proposition to fully support the growth of our travel agent partners.

“Already we are speaking with our customers globally to explain to them how they will benefit from these changes. Shortly we’ll be hosting a series of events and workshops globally to present the new enhanced offering following the integration of the GTA retail brand’s product portfolio and know-how into Bedsonline’s – leading to our travel agents benefiting from the expansion of our product portfolio to over 170,000 hotels and strengthened position to negotiate the best deals

for our customers, along with all the additional improvements we have made by cherry-picking the best-of-class functionalities and know-how from across the different brands.”

-Ends-

About Bedsonline

Bedsonline is the leading global provider of accommodation and complementary travel ancillary products that exclusively caters to travel agents. It distributes through its online platform accommodation, excursions, tickets and transfers to more than 50,000 travel agencies with sales teams in over 40 countries covering over 100 markets globally.

The company stands out for its extensive portfolio - over 170,000 hotels in 185 destinations, 24,000 transfer routes and 18,000 activities -  to offer a personalized local service through an intuitive and easy-to-use online booking tool. In this way, Bedsonline guarantees high availability and competitive prices to the great satisfaction of its clients.

The business-to-business online provider has focused its strategy in recent years on the expansion of new markets in Europe, America and Asia, such as Germany, the Czech Republic, Mexico, the United States, Colombia, China, Japan and the Philippines. This strategic vision has led the company to occupy a position of advantage in the industry.

Bedsonline is part of Hotelbeds Group, the world’s leading bedbank and business-to-business provider of services to the travel industry globally, and is headquartered in Palma de Mallorca, Spain.

For more information please contact:

Mohga Hassib

Senior Account Executive

Mohga.hassib@tca.me 

Tel. +97152450277

© Press Release 2018