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As Executive Board Members of the World Travel &amp; Tourism Council (WTTC), Hotelbeds are pleased to invite you to virtually attend the highly anticipated WTTC 20th Global Summit taking place in Cancun, Mexico.

The Global Summit, in partnership with the Government of Quintana Roo, will take place from 26-27 April 2021 with the theme ‘Uniting the World for Recovery’.

WTTC is the body that represents the private sector of the travel &amp; tourism sector. Their members include over 200 CEOs, Chairpersons, and Presidents of the world’s leading travel &amp; tourism companies from all geographies and industries, including Hotelbeds’ very own Executive Chairman, Joan Vilà, a member of WTTC’s Executive Committee.

The annual Global Summit is the most influential travel &amp; tourism event in the calendar, where the highest-level industry leaders meet with key government representatives to take action on the biggest and most important issues across the international agenda. This year, the Global Summit will be exploring the challenges ahead and providing a platform for the recovery of the sector.

To register your interest in receiving further information about how to tune in virtually to the Global Summit, please click the following link: https://wttc.org/Global-Summit


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Your chance to join the calendar’s most influential travel & tourism event 

It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost 12 months since the COVID pandemic began and turned our industry – and our lives – upside down.

I am sure back in early 2020, none of us could have imagined that the crisis would develop as it has and that we’d still be experiencing the consequences, and managing the challenges, it has brought.

Here at Hotelbeds, we pivoted swiftly to make sure we were doing all we could to support you. We switched our call centres to remote working extremely quickly and launched a suite of self-service tools to help manage the significant demand caused by the ever-changing situation.

We also took the time that the cessation in travel brought to look closely at ourselves as a company, to take stock, to reorganise and to focus on the things we know matter the most to you, recognising the need for us to work together.

Undeniably there is a long road ahead until we return to the volumes we have enjoyed in the past, but with vaccine programmes now underway across the globe and governments starting to indicate relaxations in restrictions, we are starting to see some positive signs.

There are improvements in the US, Mexico, Brazil and UAE markets generally, and in respect of domestic travel, room nights in Brazil are up by 43% compared to the same period last year and up by 12% in the US, where there is also strong demand for the Spring break.

The pent-up demand for travel is also increasingly evident and we have a responsibility as leaders in our field to make sure travel is as safe as possible when it resumes as this will be of the utmost importance to people. Initiatives such the Safe2Stay Scheme are important factors in helping to boost traveller confidence in this regard.

These past 12 months have been the most difficult in the history of the travel industry but it is my strong belief that it will bounce back, and bounce back in a way that is perhaps even more sustainable that it was pre-COVID.

Together, I look forward to moving more positively through 2021. Optimism will indeed drive recovery albeit the speed at which this will happen remains uncertain.

Thank you for your on-going collaboration and remember that our teams are here to support you so please do reach out to them.

Carlos Muñoz


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Looking to the future with optimism – a view from Hotelbeds’ Carlos Muñoz 

We’ve just become the latest company, and the first B2B travel business, to join Amazon and The Climate Pledge in urging industries worldwide to become net zero carbon by 2040, a decade ahead of the Paris Agreement.

This news comes within weeks of us publishing our second Corporate Responsibility Report, which you can read elsewhere in this newsletter, and our certification as a Carbon Neutral business for the third year running.

As a signatory to The Climate Pledge, we agree to:


	Measure and report greenhouse gas emissions on a regular basis;
	Implement decarbonization strategies in line with the Paris Agreement through real business changes and innovations, including efficiency improvements, renewable energy, materials reductions, and other carbon emission elimination strategies;
	Neutralize any remaining emissions with additional, quantifiable, real, permanent, and socially-beneficial offsets to achieve net-zero annual carbon emissions by 2040 — a decade ahead of the Paris Agreement’s goal of 2050.


Hotelbeds’ Executive Chairman, Joan Vilà, said: “As the leaders in our sector, we have a clear responsibility to demonstrate to you, our stakeholders, that we operate a responsible, transparent business model and that we take very seriously the environmental impact we have.

“We recognise our critical responsibility to protect our planet and the destinations where we operate, and we believe this is a time to double down on our investment to create a more sustainable future. This is why we are thrilled to be part of The Climate Pledge and to give our strong commitment to being net zero carbon by 2040.”


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Hotelbeds joins Amazon and The Climate Pledge in urging industries to become net zero carbon by 2040

We’re delighted to have been named as one of the top distribution channels and revenue generators for hotels in 2020 by SiteMinder, a leading channel management platform globally.

Its report, published earlier this month, confirmed the most important distribution channels that generated the highest revenues for hotels during 2020. Hotelbeds ranked highly in all destinations featured globally, leading SiteMinder to emphasise the continued relevance of wholesalers as a key distribution channel for hoteliers.

With our extensive portfolio of 60,000 travel buyers worldwide, we are in a prime position to drive volumes to hotels as we all prepare for recovery and a resumption of travel post COVID.

Carlos Muñoz, Chief Operating Officer at Hotelbeds, said: “We were delighted to be formally recognised by SiteMinder as one of the top revenue generators for hoteliers, especially in a year so impacted by the pandemic.

“This a great testament to our teams’ performance and commitment over the past twelve months despite the hugely challenging conditions that 2020 brought. We have successfully focused our efforts on being as competitive as possible while maintaining strong service levels, and this recognition gives us a clear indication that we are doing all the right things to support our valuable partners.”

The full SiteMinder report can be downloaded here.


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SiteMinder names Hotelbeds as one of the top revenue generators for hotels worldwide in 2020

Here at Hotelbeds, we are genuinely committed to our corporate social responsibilities and at the end of last month, we were proud to publish our second Corporate Responsibility report, highlighting all the ways we have been adapting our approach in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in order to provide support to the global travel industry, and to the communities most impacted by this unprecedented situation.

Prepared in accordance with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standards, and aligned to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the report covers our last financial year, from October 1st 2019 to September 30th 2020 and sets out our most relevant achievements.

Examples include:


	The launch of the Safe2Stay scheme based around a series of health &amp; safety protocols developed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic to enable hotels across our 180,000 strong portfolio to highlight the measures they are taking to keep guests safe.
	The adaptation of our Corporate Volunteering Programme to be fully on-line as mobility restrictions were introduced globally. More than 500 employees contributed over 1500 hours of their own time to support groups and communities most impacted by COVID-19. Activities included telephone calls and letters of compassion to hospital patients, virtual workshops offering tutoring and basic learning to people with disabilities, story-telling to support children living in poverty and the provision of web design and social media training to help non-profit organisations to improve their marketing.
	The creation and launch of the Green Hotels Programme to identify, highlight and promote sustainable properties from across our portfolio, with over 15,000 properties certified within the period of the report.
	And for the third year running, we were proud to be certified as a Carbon Neutral organisation, having demonstrated a significant reduction in our carbon emissions, including energy and paper consumptions, waste management, business travel and water supply.


In announcing the publication of this second report, Executive Chairman at Hotelbeds, Joan Vilà, said: “The extreme disruption and damage caused to the travel industry and the world by just one virus clearly demonstrates the very urgent and important need for our sector to commit to a sustainable future and increase our positive impact now more than ever.”

He added: “This report demonstrates our continued commitment to become a responsible and transparent business. We recognise that as a leader in our sector, the eyes of all our stakeholders and future generations are fixed firmly on us and they expect us to drive resilience, adapt with the times and build long-term sustainability not just at an environmental level but also socially and economically.

“We are firmly committed to this and are setting long-term goals to benefit the travellers of today and tomorrow, as well as to prioritise their health, safety and well-being along with those of our employees, partners and local communities.

“I am extremely proud to publish this report as it is a strong indication of the dedication of our company to this agenda. In a year like no other, we have not only maintained our levels of commitment but have significantly improved them which will stand us in good stead as we start to see the first signs of industry recovery during 2021.”

Download the full report here


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Reaffirming our commitment to overcoming environmental and social challenges with the launch of our 2020 CSR report

We’re already the largest bedbank in the world, giving you access to 180,000 hotel properties across the globe but guess what, we’ve just super-sized our portfolio giving you even more possibilities to choose from!

As we prepare for travel to resume safely, we’ve just added more than 156,000 more hotels across 4,850 destinations giving you greater choice of properties – and don’t forget, that’s alongside a huge range of activities and transfers you can add too!


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Our portfolio just got super-sized!

We’re delighted to announce a brand new, year long partnership with PROMTUR Panama aimed at raising awareness of the beauty and diversity of the destination to travellers from the US, Canada, Europe, China and LATAM.

The exciting co-op campaign is designed to put Panama high on people’s wish lists for when safe travel resumes and will target Hotelbeds’ high value, hard to access portfolio of 60,000 travel trade buyers – including retail travel agencies, tour operators, airlines and points redemption programmes.

Hotelbeds already has a strong presence in Panama, producing over 100,000 incoming pax into the destination from 80 different source markets, and partnering with more than 130 hotels and activities. We strongly believes that Panama has enormous potential to grow and become one of the top producing destinations within our LATAM portfolio.

The promotion will be focused through Hotelbeds main distribution channels of Bedsonline (our brand targeting retail travel agencies) and Hotelbeds, for wholesale distribution. The campaign will aim to place Panama on the radar of more than 60,000 travel trade buyers.

To take a closer look at the campaign, please click on the links below:


	For the USA campaign, click here
	For the LATAM campaign, click here
	For the global campaign, click here


Gareth Matthews, Global Marketing &amp; Communications Director at Hotelbeds, commented: “We are really pleased to enter into this partnership with PROMTUR Panama. With the demand we continue to see for Latin American destinations, we believe Panama delivers all the qualities that international leisure travellers are looking for – a modern international city, amazing beaches, unique cuisine and culture and of course eco-tourism offerings that are truly breath-taking! We are excited to grow our partnership with Panama for many years to come.”

Woodrow Oldford, Chief Marketing Officer of PROMTUR Panama (Panama's Destination Marketing Organization) said; “Panama is pleased to begin a long-term partnership with Hotelbeds. The launch of our alliance with Hotelbeds is a strategic move for us in kick-starting tourism in Panama. We see the value of partnering with industry leaders to reach and educate others in the travel industry. There is a pent-up demand for travel, and we believe Hotelbeds will be a key part of tapping into the demand and ensuring our future success.”


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Hotelbeds enters exciting new partnership with PROMTUR Panama!

We’ve just entered into a new partnership with tech giant, Google Cloud, that’s already resulting in a reduction in response times by up to 7% and an increase in conversion rates for our API clients.

What’s more, these clients – our tour operators, retail travel agent chains, airlines and point redemption schemes - are also benefiting from increased flexibility, uptime and reliability due to the platform’s auto-scaling architecture.

In addition, there’s also benefits for the 180,000 hotel properties that make up our portfolio as their product will now be made available to travel trade buyers more quickly and reliably than ever before, thus increasing incremental bookings from non-domestic and high-value guests -the typical guest profile our distribution channels attract.

Simon Matthews, CTO at Hotelbeds, said: “An ever faster response time is one of the most important metrics for our API partners – and indirectly for our hotel and ancillary supplier partners who benefit too – and we achieve this with reliable partners like Google Cloud, who offer us security, scalability and reliability on a global scale.

“Like many other travel tech companies our conversion to the cloud started with an initial technical push with a single cloud provider tightly coupled – and deliberately so – with our legacy on-premise infrastructure. We are now able to deploy our workloads at an incredibly efficient speed on Google Cloud, deploying infrastructure as code and platform as a service – and thereby helping fuel the recovery of our partners everywhere.”

Isaac Hernández, Country Manager at Google Cloud Spain and Portugal, added: "We are very excited to announce our partnership with one of the leading travel technology companies at this key moment when it’s imperative to help the industry recover from the impact of COVID-19. Just as managing bookings has become more operationally complex given the current situation, we are able to offer Hotelbeds and its partners a rapidly scalable solution that reduces costs and helps increase revenues by reducing that all important response time.”


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Google Cloud partnership helps fuel recovery by reducing response times and increasing sales conversions for API clients

We’re super thrilled to announce a new, preferred partnership deal with House of Travel, the largest privately owned travel company in New Zealand and the third largest travel organisation in the Asia Pacific region.

This new enhanced partnership will give us – and the 180,000 hotel properties we work with worldwide - a prominent position on House of Travel’s booking platform, Splash, enabling us to increase our distribution reach in New Zealand, through House of Travel’s 75 retail travel stores in the region.

In addition, House of Travel will also be able to offer its clients ancillary services from Beyond The Bed, our portfolio made up of 25,000 transfer routes, 18,000 activities in more than 680 destinations, and 30,000 pick-up locations in 170 countries.

House of Travel joins our existing portfolio of 60,000 travel trade buyers, who typically attract non-domestic travellers that book higher value properties further in advance, stay for longer, have lower cancellation rates and spend more at the property.

León Herce, Global Sales Director at Hotelbeds, said: “We are very excited to announce our preferred partnership with House of Travel, the largest privately owned travel company in New Zealand.

“By extending our reach across the 75 member agency network of House of Travel in New Zealand, and our preferred partner position on its retail booking platform 'Splash' we are extremely well equipped to take advantage of the pent up demand we know will be significant once international borders are open again. At the same time, our 180,000 hotels worldwide will benefit from this agreement by expanding their distribution reach in the important Pacific outbound market.”

Dave Fordyce, Product and Channel Director at House of Travel, added: “We are pleased to cement our partnership with Hotelbeds and strengthen the relationship in preparation for a travel resurgence. As House of Travel’s customer centric focus requires having access to a broad range of deals and hotels, we believe that Hotelbeds will continue to deliver and complement our expected demand in 2021 and beyond.”


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Hotelbeds signs preferred partnership with House of Travel to increase distribution reach in the Pacific

As part of our commitment to boosting the recovery, we’ve just launched an exciting package of deals as part of our New Year Sales event!

We have lined up all sorts of flexible deals with discounts of up to 30% for travel throughout 2021 so what are you waiting for?

If you’re a web client, offers will be highlighted on our booking engine with the 'New Year Sales' label. Use the 'New Year Sales' filter on the left-hand side of our booking engine to quickly find the offers.

For API clients, your rates will be shown under the promotion code 515.

Click link below for your region’s landing page NOW and get the boost you need for 2021.


	
		
			USA
			APAC
		
		
			Canada
			Europe
		
		
			Brazil
			MEAI
		
	


&nbsp;

If you’re in any doubt, don’t be shy! Get in touch with your Hotelbeds Account Manager who can help with answers to more any technical questions!

And don’t forget, with our flyer generator and the recommendations provided by our data-intelligence, you can easily share promotional materials with all your clients!


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Kick start 2021 and take advantage of our New Year sales!

As we continue to work hard to fuel the recovery of the industry and strengthen opportunities for business growth, we’re pleased to announce the extension of our six-year partnership with HotelRunner, a sales channel management platform and B2B network for OTAs and hoteliers.

This positive news means that once long-haul travel recovers, Hotelbeds’ travel trade buyers will provide the accommodation partners of HotelRunner with high value, incremental reservations from non-domestic markets. HotelRunner will also continue to provide Hotelbeds’ travel distribution clients with access to significant additional hotel partners globally, with wider coverage in the United States, LATAM, Africa and South East Asia

Paul Anthony, Digital Commercialisation Director at Hotelbeds, said: “As part of this extended partnership with HotelRunner, there is a very strong opportunity for Hotelbeds to not only acquire new hotels, especially in the long tail space, but also to grow the inventory managed through those hotels by maximising the rate-mix, competitiveness and availability.

“We are working hard together to build shared capabilities to help identify, process and convert opportunities through automated processes, self-service solutions and leveraging data. This will help ensure that together we are effectively positioned for the recovery of international travel.”&nbsp;

Arden Agopyan, Founder &amp; Managing Partner from HotelRunner, added: "Our six-year long and continuously growing relationship has been very productive, and we are now ready to take this to a more strategic level.

“When the recovery in international travel occurs, our 40,000+ accommodation partners from all over the world will want to capitalize on that by accessing hard-to-reach bookings from all channels including the offline channels such as tour operators, travel agents, airlines and points redemption schemes – of which Hotelbeds has over 60,000 such partners around the world.”&nbsp;

“Through its powerful and easy-to-use suite of tools, HotelRunner gives all properties, regardless of size, access to the best hospitality management technology. This means hoteliers and hosts can grow reservations and automate their workflows with confidence and ease.”

HotelRunner has offices in the United States, United Kingdom and Turkey, and has properties in 193 countries ranging from daily short-term rentals to B&amp;Bs, boutique hotels and enterprise hotels and chains.


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Hotelbeds extends its partnership with HotelRunner

Coming hot on the heels of our Green Hotels Programme launch, which identifies, highlights and promotes sustainable accommodation within our hotel portfolio, we are pleased to announce our certification as a carbon neutral company for the third year in a row, another ‘plus’ in our ambition to fuel the recovery by doing all that we can to show we are a responsible, ethical business.

Certified through analysis of our carbon footprint by the independent body, Carbon Footprint Ltd, the accreditation demonstrates our commitment over the past three years to reduce our environmental impact and ensure long-term sustainability by offsetting the carbon emissions we generate.

But how have we done it?&nbsp;

During 2018, we created a programme where a fee was paid for every business flight taken by an employee. &nbsp;The money generated was then used to finance a carbon neutral project, helping to encourage reduction in travel and increase awareness around the importance of carbon offsetting.

The funds raised from this programme were also donated to the Portel-Pará Deforestation Project, located in the Brazilian Amazon, home to the largest remaining rainforest on our planet, to help prevent unplanned deforestation.

In 2019, Hotelbeds chose to give the funds to the Renewable Energy Project in India which manages the installation of solar panels across the country.

And this year, Hotelbeds will be supporting the Verified Carbon Standard certified Guohua Tongliao Kezuo Zhongqi Phase 1 Wind Power project in China, which aims to reduce carbon emissions through the displacement of fossil fuels. This project will also help to combat climate change and protect our environment for future generations.

Gareth Matthews, Marketing, Communications and CSR Director at Hotelbeds, said: “We are proud to be certified a Carbon Neutral organisation for the third consecutive year. This really underscores our sustainable business ethos and sets a great example both to our staff and the wider travel industry.

“As leaders in the travel industry we want to be at the forefront of environmental consciousness, inspiring both other companies and even individual travellers by reducing our emissions where possible and off-setting the rest.”

As part of the certification process, carbon emission calculations – including energy and paper consumptions, waste management, business travel and water supply – were conducted by Hotelbeds, using metrics devised by Carbon Footprint Ltd.

Carbon Footprint Ltd has also successfully completed a verification of the carbon footprint assessment for Hotelbeds. This included spot-checking source data from across the company as well as reviewing the overall methodology.


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