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Hotelbeds signs new strategic partnership with Louvre Hotels Group

We are very pleased to confirm that our successful partnership with OYO Rooms has reached the 100,000 room nights booked milestone.

OYO Hotels &amp; Homes is the world’s 6th largest hotel chain and last April we announced a strategic global distribution partnership together. The preferred agreement represented OYO’s first-ever distribution partnership with a bedbank.

We can also now confirm that by the end of this year we´ll have the full OYO Rooms portfolio live in our system and long-term together aim to distribute 500,000 room nights annually.

To find out more about booking OYO´s portfolio speak with your Hotelbeds manager today!&nbsp;


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OYO Rooms passes 100k landmark!

Providing people with assurance about safety whilst travelling is a top priority right now for the whole industry.&nbsp;

Further to our announcement last month, we have now launched our new distribution filter category called Safe2Stay.

The filter provides details about each properties’ prevention measures and official certifications to fight against the spread of COVID-19 – and is available via both Hotelbeds and Bedsonline.&nbsp;

It works by grouping together both hotel chains certifications and the certifications and protocols issued by public authorities, tourism boards or other Institutions. We are also working hard to ensure that measures are being taken with our supplier partners across all product lines, including transfers and activities.

All partners working with Hotelbeds that have created their own COVID-19 health and safety protocols are eligible to include their information in the filter category and hotels partners can do so directly via MaxiRoom, Hotelbeds’ partner extranet. &nbsp;
Global health and safety certifications from hotel chain partners such as Accor, Radisson, Hyatt and RIU Hotels and Resorts, as well as organizations such as the American Hotel &amp; Lodging Association and Turismo de Portugal, will be displayed in the Safe2Stay filter category alongside those of many other companies and institutions.
To find out more information speak with your normal Hotelbeds contact today!&nbsp;


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Keeping travellers informed about safety

The current and sudden high level of demand for domestic travel from the world’s biggest source markets is now widely recognized.&nbsp;

But exactly where, when and how will this take place? Harnessing big data analytical capabilities, at Hotelbeds we have been able to closely compare the main corridors, lead time, and length of stay for each source market to more accurately predict the characteristics of the surge in demand for domestic stays.

Armed with this information we are planning to add 10,000 new properties to our global portfolio of hotels by the end of the year.&nbsp;

As a first wave the initiative will be implemented in &nbsp;the USA, Canada, Mexico, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, UK, UAE, Saudi Arabia, China, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand, with more countries to be included in the near future.

&nbsp;

Furthermore, we will build upon this increased demand for domestic travel by implementing several new initiatives, such as:


	Expanding our hotel portfolio in secondary destinations to include new leisure options that meet the needs of domestic travellers.&nbsp;
	Adding more property types to provide variety for these travellers, for example, resorts and rural hotels.&nbsp;
	Kick-starting the sector by helping customers book in confidence through increasing the availability of refundable rates.&nbsp;
	Reducing releases and minimum stay requirements to increase maximum availability for last-minute domestic travellers.&nbsp;
	Launching local marketing campaigns targeted at B2B travel buyers in these source markets to promote and secure availability for this summer season! &nbsp;


&nbsp;

Speaking about the plan, our Global Sales Director, León Herce said: &nbsp;“Following client feedback, and thanks to our own data analytics capabilities, we have detected not only the overall surge in domestic demand, but the requirement for more product in secondary destinations, across all different property types.”&nbsp;


&nbsp;“As you would expect, hoteliers in these destinations – many of them previously dependent on international markets that are unlikely to be travelling anytime soon – are very keen to capture the new domestic demand and we are working hard to sign them up fast.”
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Responding to domestic demand 

We have signed a preferred partnership deal with Radisson Hotel Group to enable them to distribute their portfolio of 1,100 hotels to our 60,000 B2B travel buyers such as tour operators, travel agents, airlines and points redemption schemes.

This also means that our customers are now able to access preferential rates and availability across Radisson Hotel Group’s portfolio, which includes the Radisson Collection, Radisson Blu, Radisson, Radisson RED, Park Plaza, Park Inn by Radisson and Country Inn &amp; Suites by Radisson brands.

Talking about the deal, our very own Mark Redmond, Head of Global Chains said: “Radisson Hotel Group is one of the world’s largest hotel groups and we are delighted to sign a preferred partnership with them. Once restrictions are removed and travel begins to start again, I am certain that our 60,000 B2B travel buying clients will be very excited about gaining access to special rates and availability for Radisson Hotel Group’s well-known brands such as Radisson Blu, Park Plaza or Park Inn by Radisson.”

Whilst Eric de Neef, EVP &amp; Global Chief Commercial Officer at Radisson Hotel Group, added: “Through the alliance with Hotelbeds we have access to a leading and strategically important B2B distribution network, including both wholesale and retail distribution worldwide through Bedsonline.

"As we start to re-boot, re-shape and re-boost the business after the peak of the crisis, we want to continuously extend our sales reach, and Hotelbeds is the right partner to achieve this. We look forward to working with Hotelbeds and to not only grow overall bookings together, but more importantly to grow incremental, high-value bookings.”
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Preferred partnership with Radisson Hotel Group


	New redesigned API portal makes APItude even easier to use and more powerful for clients such as tour operators, airlines and points redemption schemes.
	APItude can now handle up to 14 billion searches a day during peak periods.
	New functionalities include a real-time dashboard, automated documentation, and faster integration with the Hotelbeds APIs via a simple four-step onboarding process.
	
	&nbsp;


APItude is Hotelbeds’ API that allows travel trade buyers such as tour operators, airlines and points redemption schemes to directly integrate Hotelbeds’ 180,000 hotel properties and ancillary services into their platform.&nbsp;

The new portal has been through beta testing with selected clients for the last two months and now is ready for launch, featuring a completely renewed design and new functionality.


As a result, APItude is now even easier for clients to use, due to features such as:


	Real-time dashboard: clients will have full control and visibility over their current API status and usage in real time. There is also a new stats dashboard, providing near real-time insights of API usage, powered directly by Hotelbeds’ Business Intelligence data warehouse.
	Automated documentation: &nbsp;Hotelbeds has built modern, automated OpenAPI generated documentation to ensure the documentation always remains updated for our clients.
	Faster integration with the APIs: new integrations will go from testing to production in just a few days, with a simple, new four-step process. This turnaround time to execution makes APItude far more appealing.



The audience for this new API Portal will no longer be just developers, but also members of the sourcing, product and sales management teams of Hotelbeds’ clients that are aiming to boost their commercial performance via APItude. In order to achieve the above, and in &nbsp;addition to today’s launch, by the end of 2020, the API Portal will feature an optimization centre providing tailored hotel recommendations based on current market data, &nbsp;which will enable the Hotelbeds’ clients to receive a competitive edge and to provide better product to the end customers.

León Herce, Global Sales Director at Hotelbeds, said: “With the first signs of recovery in the market beginning to emerge it is even more essential to provide our clients with the best available tools &nbsp;by enhancing the developer experience and making the whole process even faster and more intuitive. We believe that this latest version of APItude does just that and I´d like to thank all the team for their hard work and commitment in delivering this on time to meet the very urgent needs of the market.”

APItude is the fastest and lightest hotel distribution API in the market. It enhances the developer experience by making the integration process easier, faster, and more intuitive – allowing partners to develop their own travel website or mobile app using Hotelbeds’ product portfolio more easily than ever before.

Forming part of Hotelbeds’ commitment to innovation, APItude was launched by Hotelbeds at World Travel Market (WTM) in 2015.

To learn more about the new developer portal please visit https://developer.hotelbeds.com/


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Innovative API portal launch for APItude 


	Free monthly webinar series hosted by Hotelbeds will offer insights into how to respond to the challenges of COVID-19.
	Each Travel Talk webinar will feature a panel of leading travel industry experts.
	First edition on June 18th to explore ‘What does the journey to recovery look like?’.
	&nbsp;


The free monthly webinar series will provide insights into the COVID-19 challenges currently faced by the whole travel industry, as well as recommendations for both identifying and capturing opportunities for recovery.

Each month Travel Talk will be hosted by Hotelbeds and will feature panellist of leading experts from across the industry such as hoteliers and lobby groups, plus travel buyers such as tour operators, airlines and point redemption schemes.

Travel Talk’s first edition will take place on June the 18th at 5pm CET/11am ET and the topic will be ‘What does the journey to recovery look like?‘.

This first panel will address key issues such as how to look out for the signs of recovery, how travel companies should adapt their business for when the recovery begins, and a debate around the biggest challenges the industry faces, both now and in the future.&nbsp;

Paul Anthony, Commercial Excellence and Global Partnerships Sourcing Director at Hotelbeds will moderate the panel and will be accompanied by the following speakers:


	Maribel Rodríguez, Senior Vice President at World Travel &amp; Tourism Council (WTTC)
	Michael Savage, Director at American Airlines Vacations
	Cheryl Williams, Regional Vice President at Alohilani Resort Waikiki Beach and HIGHGATE Hawaii.
	&nbsp;


Gareth Matthews, Director of Marketing &amp; Communications at Hotelbeds commented: “For some time we´ve been working hard behind-the-scenes to help our partners respond to the challenges of COVID-19. But we felt that the combination of our strong industry knowledge and global portfolio of leading industry partners places us in a unique position to produce significant insights and advice for the industry as a whole – and one of the most appropriate ways to present this is via a programme of free webinars that everyone in the industry is welcome to join. We have some impressive guests planned for both this first edition and the future webinars that will form part of the programme. Watch this space.”&nbsp;

The webinar is open to anyone in the industry to attend via the following registration page: https://joinus.hotelbeds.com/traveltalk1-the-journey-to-recovery/


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Hotelbeds launches Travel Talk webinar series to help industry recover from the challenges of COVID-19

Safe2Stay is a distribution filter category that consolidates and displays in the booking process the different COVID-19 health and safety protocols and certifications that travel industry companies, tourism boards and lobby groups have recently created.

The Safe2Stay category covers both accommodation and providers of services such as transfers, activities, theme parks and car rental. All products with a listing in the category will feature a Safe2Stay badge in the booking engine along with details of what this means outlined in a glossary compiling all protocols in one reference point.

All partners working with Hotelbeds that have created their own COVID-19 health and safety protocols are eligible to include their information in the filter category and hotels partners can do so directly via MaxiRoom, Hotelbeds’ partner extranet. &nbsp;

Global health and safety certifications from hotel chain partners such as Accor, Radisson, Hyatt and RIU Hotels and Resorts, as well as organizations such as the American Hotel &amp; Lodging Association and Turismo de Portugal, will be displayed in the Safe2Stay filter category alongside those of many other companies and institutions.

This category will be visible as a filter on the Hotelbeds and Bedsonline booking engines and the same information will be made available to all of Hotelbeds’ API clients to configure into their own systems.

Tobias Thibaut, Risk, Compliance, Internal Audit &amp; Sustainability Director at Hotelbeds, said: “Today more than ever, we need to focus on the safety and wellbeing of guests during the COVID-19 pandemic. When it becomes available in a few weeks our ‘Safe2Stay’ filter category will be very valuable for our clients when reserving a hotel for their customers or other ancillary products by giving them greater confidence and thus helping the tourism sector recover more quickly.

“As there are already many different standards and certification processes out there, it is important to bring them together under one category and for the information to be easily displayed in the booking process. We encourage all our supplier partners out there who have introduced their own standards or who are adhering to third party standards to input the details in MaxiRoom right away to gain the Safe2Stay badge”

This news follows the recent announcement that Hotelbeds has backed the World Travel &amp; Tourism Council’s ‘Safe Travels’ initiative and is working towards making this available in Hotelbeds’ distribution process. Safe Travels creates global recovery protocols – including for hotels – for the COVID-19 pandemic, with the help of industry associations, health experts and governments.


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Hotelbeds to launch ‘Safe2Stay’ to support industry recovery

Hotelbeds has developed an automated WhatsApp and a Facebook Messenger service to enable partners to receive the latest updates on operational issues related to COVID-19.

Examples of information available via the WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger services include:


	Details of the global force majeure that Hotelbeds has put in place for all bookings worldwide (with some exceptions) until April 30.
	Lists of destinations that have been closed by local governments, along with details of how pre-existing bookings for those markets are being proactively cancelled.
	Information on how to cancel and modify bookings via the Hotelbeds website.
	Reference copies of official update emails sent to partners over the last few weeks.
	Plus Q&amp;As to answer the most common questions asked by partners




By subscribing to the services Hotelbeds partners can ask questions via an interactive menu with automated responses, request responses from the operations teams, and subscribe for further updates.

The information available in both the WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger service complements the comprehensive information available from the dedicated COVID-19 operational website created by Hotelbeds in mid-March and updated daily since.


Gareth Matthews, Marketing &amp; Communications Director of Hotelbeds, comments: “Up-to-the-minute operational updates on COVID-19 are essential to both our clients and hotel partners during these challenging times.

“We quickly developed our COVID-19 dedicated website resource for partners but were keen to go further by allowing people to also access information via convenient channels like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger – I´d like to thank the team for developing this in record time.

“To all our clients and hotel partners out there I´d just like to say that we recognise that these are very tough times. But we want you to know that we will be with you all the way, right now and then when you and your customers and guests are ready to go again.

“Over the coming weeks and months we´ll be announcing further actions that we´ll be taking to fulfill this promise.”

Clients looking for the full weblinks to register for the services can find them here.


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Hotelbeds launches innovative COVID-19 updates via WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger

This depends on the scenario:


	In cases where travel is restricted and force majeure applies for domestic and international, for example in Italy, then you should send a list of the affected bookings to Hotelsupport.
	For cases where travel is not restricted, you should provide a same standard alternative room and if the end traveller decides they do not want to travel, a cancellation free of charge should be offered.
	Finally, in the cases where you are not providing a same standard alternative or not providing an alternative at all, and if the end traveller still wants to travel, Hotelbeds will relocate the traveller and if there are any extra costs we will apply a deduction to your hotel (only for cases where Force Majeure is not applying)



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