Hotelbeds Group makes Canadian debut

Hotelbeds Group toasted their Canadian hotel partners while looking ahead to a strong 2018 last night, during the company’s first post-merger event in Canada.

The group, providing a global bedbank and business-to-business services to the travel industry, is now comprised of Hotelbeds, GTA and Tourico Holidays, following a series of mergers which took place in 2017. Through the merger agreements, the group also includes GTA’s TravelBound and Hotelbeds’ bedsonline, both of which work with the travel agent community.

With Tourico establishing a Canadian office in Toronto last year, the group is looking to grow their Canadian business even more, representatives from each company told PAX last night.

“We’re here to do a lot more business as joint brands,” said Bill Chambers, vice-president of product development, USA West, Canada and the Caribbean, for Tourico Holidays. “We bring a global customer base that brings 90,000 customers worldwide and we’re here to remind everyone that these three brands are stronger together than they are individually.”

“Canada is a growing market for us,” added Alex Hugh-Jones, head of sourcing, East Coast America & Canada, GTA. “In 2018, we really want to strengthen our relationships in the country.”

Through the merger, Chambers explained that with each individual company boasting different strengths based on their respective global presence, the overall group can draw on each of the three companies’ individual strengths. Looking ahead, those strengths will be leveraged to book hotel rooms in destinations outside of major international cities, said Sevil Arnavutoglu-Le, vice president, product - West Coast, Hawaii and Canada, for Hotelbeds.

“The three companies’ strength is not only can we bring travellers to the major international cities, but we’ve talked about our long-term strategies,” she explained. “We have a separate strategy to support other tertiary destinations.”

“In North America and Canada, we had our first joint meetings,” Chambers added. “We’re all exactly on the same page with our next six months and what we need to do, with both the outbound and inbound markets in Canada.”