Travelport GDS has unveiled a series of initiatives aimed at boosting hotel bookings on both Galileo and Worldspan.
The GDS provider, which currently boasts a portfolio of around 90,000 hotels with content available globally, is not only looking for new niche hotel partners in the Middle East, but plans to ramp up travel agent training in a bid to drive more hotel bookings each year.
"We do already run a number of initiatives to help hotels distribute themselves via the GDS including our Best Available Rate (BAR) programme, as well as initiatives to help agents make more hotel bookings, but now we are looking to localise some of the work we have done in the past in the Middle East market," explained Travelport GDS senior director hospitality Jane Lewis, who is responsible for the company’s non-air product.
She explained that in light of Travelport GDS’ new distribution strategy in the Middle East — the company now distributes Galileo itself in the UAE, KSA and Egypt markets having developed a new support infrastructure and has also signed new distribution agreements region-wide — there would be a number of roadshows aimed at educating agents about selling non-air products through Galileo.
"We will be getting local hotels to sponsor the events and bring agents together and show them how easy it is to book rooms on the GDS and what’s involved in a GDS booking," said Lewis.
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"We are the leading GDS in the Middle East market, but in the past, we have been more focused on aviation. Now our drive is to educate the market about booking hotels."
This would include rolling out the Travelport GDS virtual training programme, she said, whereby travel agents can sign up to virtual class room training from their desk and learn how to make hotel and car bookings.
To further boost hotel sales, an agent incentive programme was also in the pipeline, Lewis revealed.
"We are already rolling out a test incentive programme in the Australia/New Zealand and Benelux markets whereby agents are given gift vouchers for a certain number of hotel bookings made," she said.
In addition, Travelport GDS is currently working on a hotel strategy that will provide the hotel industry with an insight into what hotel content agents actually require, as well as meaningful hotel data and trends, Lewis told Hotelier Middle East.
The report will be issued in April, she said, details of which will be printed on www.hoteliermiddleeast.com and in Hotelier Middle East.
She also reminded the hotel industry that 10% of Travelport’s GDS content was non-air and that the GDS provider processed more than 50 million room nights per year and delivered around US $7.8 billion in room revenue to the hotel industry.
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