EasyCruise has signed a deal with Thomas Cook-owned bed bank hotels4u.com in a move that will also see its product featured on flexibletrips.com for the first time.
From this week the budget cruiseline’s Turkey and Greece itineraries are featuring on the bed bank’s site as well as Thomas Cook’s dynamic packaging site.
Significantly, this will give the cruiseline access to distribution through Thomas Cook shops – which it has no commercial arrangement with – for the first time. The deal is also likely to lead to the cruiseline being featured on Med Hotels, the bed bank recently acquired by Thomas Cook, in future.
The move allows travel agents to book seven and 14 night itineraries or cruise and stays, with non-euro zone destination Turkey expected to be the most popular destination.
EasyCruise sales and marketing director Paul Ellerby said the move was a significant plank in its strategy to build trade sales from 20% to 50% of its business this year. The cruiseline already works with bed bank youtravel.com and has also struck a distribution deal with The Co-operative Travel.
He said: “Part of this strategy is to work with other bed banks because of the success of our deal with youtravel.com. We do not see the majority of that growth coming from cruise travel agents; we see most coming from operators and bed banks.”
The cruiseline, which has other bed bank deals in the pipeline, has launched a marketing push this week on Greece and Turkey cruise and stay packages of £599 with online travel agency Jetline Travel.
This week it also signed a distribution deal with global distribution system supplier Amadeus to get distribution through its travel agent channel.