Palladium Hotel Group has today launched a new B2B programme which will bring agent training, incentives and news together for each of its hotel brands.
It comes as the group announced a strong trade performance for latest opening Hard Rock Hotel Tenerife; since opening in October last year, 70% of its bookings have come from the UK market and of those, half were booked by the trade.
Palladium Connect will bring the likes of Ushuaia and Hard Rock Hotels in Spain, Fiesta Hotels & Resorts, Grand Palladium Hotels & Resorts and recently-rebranded TRS Hotels in Mexico and the Dominican Republic together on one trade platform for the first time.
Nacho Gozalbo Fernandez, commercial director for UK, France and Scandinavia, said: “Palladium Connect is a B2B programme for agents, where they can be rewarded either with points or with cash.
“We have a lot of faith in this programme and we believe it will be a good way to boost sales to our hotels. It has been going on for a year and a half in our North American and South American markets.
“We would like to build our relationships with travel agents. For the past 10 years, Palladium has been very much focused on a traditional tour operation model, but right now we are opening our contracting up to a lot of different tour operators and with that, we need some way to get travel agents to know Palladium and the rest of the hotels.
“In the UK, Ushuaia and Hard Rock are quite well known, but we have some work to do with Palladium brands.”
The interactive programme will offer agents an incentive for signing up, completing each online programme, and for recommending the site to colleagues.
Hard Rock Hotel Tenerife will host Jet2holidays’ VIP agent conference later this month, bringing the total number of agents who have visited the hotel – on fam trips, conferences or using discounted agent rates – to nearly 500 over the past year.
TRS Yucatan Hotel is the next in the group to open, later this month, with the Grand Palladium Costa Mujeres Resort & Spa and TRS Coral Hotel in Mexico to come in November 2018, and further openings planned in Ibiza in 2019.