Gruppo UNA Hotels Case Study

Gruppo UNA Hotels is Italy’s largest domestic hotel chain in terms of the number of rooms, offering over 5,000 in 39 hotels, resorts and aparthotels across the country.
Gruppo UNA Hotels, with its brands UNA Esperienze, UNAHOTELS and UNAWAY, prides itself on a solid heritage and unique Italian experience to every guest who visit.
In 2016, UNIPOL Group acquired UNA Hotels and merged with Atahotels into Gruppo UNA Hotels. Hotelbeds supported the group throughout the transition with access to the vital distribution channel management capabilities needed to access hard-to-reach segments of the large chain market.

Having just one contractual agreement for a group of travel buyers, like tour operators, and a single point of contact at Hotelbeds for our entire chain saves us a lot of time. Your account manager is always on hand to answer any of our questions, and incidents are resolved in a matter of hours, avoiding unnecessary back-and-forth emails and time-consuming admin.

Barbara Paganoni,
Leisure Sales Director,
Gruppo UNA Hotels

About Gruppo UNA Hotels

Gruppo UNA Hotels is Italy’s largest domestic hotel chain in terms of the number of rooms, offering over 5,000 in 39 hotels, resorts and aparthotels across the country.

Gruppo UNA Hotels, with its brands UNA Esperienze, UNAHOTELS and UNAWAY, prides itself on a solid heritage and unique Italian experience to every guest who visit.

In 2016, UNIPOL Group acquired UNA Hotels and merged with Atahotels into Gruppo UNA Hotels. Hotelbeds supported the group throughout the transition with access to the vital distribution channel management capabilities needed to access hard-to-reach segments of the large chain market.

Hotelbeds and Gruppo UNA Hotels – a mutually-beneficial partnership

Today, the partnership is more consolidated than ever, and Gruppo UNA Hotels entrusts Hotelbeds with distributing their rates across the globe.

And since Hotelbeds is fully integrated with the Gruppo UNA Hotels property and channel management systems, updating inventory and pricing is quick and easy.

If you’re keen to learn more about the unique value of the bedbanks distribution model, the PhocusWire/Hotelbeds report offers a comprehensive overview.

Scenario and challenges

Like many other hotel chains of their size, in recent years Gruppo UNA Hotels faced the following challenges:

• Rate integrity issues were becoming a growing problem.
• Inventory management with different distribution channels was proving complicated and time-consuming.
• Large OTAs were abusing their bargaining power, and it was difficult to shift bookings to direct channels without incurring high marketing costs.
• Optimizing revenue strategy through pricing adjustments and offer generation without reducing public prices was complicated using their existing systems.

But by working with their dedicated contact person at Hotelbeds, Barbara Paganoni and her colleagues at Gruppo UNA Hotels were able to address these complex challenges.

How a single point of contact helped Gruppo UNA Hotels reduce distribution channel management resources

• A single contact person for the entire chain ensures incidents are resolved in a matter of hours, avoiding lengthy email chains, phone calls and admin.
• Working with the Hotelbeds point of contact makes generating, updating and distributing opaque, ad-hoc offers easier than before.
• By offering a system that is fully integrated with the property and channel management systems, updating pricing and inventory is easy.
• The continual monitoring of prices and channels by Hotelbeds significantly reduces rate integrity issues.

Gruppo UNA Hotels absolutely understand our exposure capabilities and are really taking advantage of participating in our sales promotions and ad-hoc campaigns. This proactiveness has been one of the key factors in their success

Michele Romita,
Area Manager South Italy and Islands,
Hotelbeds

Results

Partnering with Hotelbeds helped Gruppo UNA Hotels access market segments not always available to them via the large OTAs. The partnership also freed up valuable time and resources, which led to favourable results.

The Gruppo UNA Hotels/Hotelbeds partnership by the numbers:

• 6 years partnering with Hotelbeds
• 10% increase in revenue/room nights sold vs last year
• 20% YoY growth in gross sales
• 15% of inventory sold to leisure segment is via Hotelbeds’ network

Unless we work with a huge amount of distributing channels, you are selling more than 50% of our accommodation targeted to the leisure segment

Working with Hotelbeds

• Hotelbeds is the largest B2B seller of travel ancillaries, offering 24,000 transfer routes and 18,000 activities, as well as attractions, tickets and car hire.
• Partners gain access to a network of over 66,000 hard-to-access B2B travel buyers, including tour operators, retail travel agents, airline websites, and loyalty schemes in over 190 global source markets.
• Distribution channels provide hotel partners with returning guests that book further in advance, cancel less, spend more in-destination and stay longer.