A digital business-to-business platform has been established by VisitEngland to enable tourism suppliers to connect to multiple international distributors.
Tourism Exchange Great Britain (TXGB) is described as a “one-stop” shop for tourism firms including accommodation providers, visitor attractions and experiences, to link to distributors with international reach and sell overseas.
The initiative aims to simplify the process for businesses wanting to connect to multiple distributor channels.
By linking to tourism suppliers’ booking systems, TXGB ‘feeds’ live availability and pricing, as well as product descriptions, images and relevant content into national and international distributor sites such as Booking.com, Ctrip and Expedia.
Suppliers can select as many distributors as they want by agreeing to the respective terms, conditions and fees.
The platform also gives suppliers access to booking data and sales analytics, so that businesses can identify trends across all distribution channels.
For those businesses that do not have a booking system, or booking pages on their website, TXGB can also help get them up and running.
Tourism businesses in England can connect to TXGB, developed and operated by technology partners Rainmaker and V3, for free.
They pay commission to the distributors they opt into and a 2.5% plus VAT booking fee to TXGB per booking, which goes towards running the platform.
Distributors benefit from access to a range of England tourism offerings, a connection either via TXGB’s free of charge white label tools which are pre-set or they can develop a connection via an open API which links the online systems of suppliers and distributors seamlessly, allowing full customisation of pages.
TXGB also provides 24/7 email and telephone support for suppliers and distributors.
It can also be used by destinations across England who can become distributors, making all tourism products within their destination available to distributors in one place.
TXGB is being introduced in conjunction with ‘Taking England to the World’, VisitEngland’s travel trade training programme. Training sessions start in Manchester on July 4 with Google Digital Garage.
The training and accompanying toolkit supports businesses to become “international ready”, with modules covering everything from knowing types of inbound travellers to calculating pricing and working with the media
The system was developed at undisclosed cost as part of the government’s Discover England Fund to support the industry to develop world-class bookable English tourism products.
VisitEngland commercial director Carol Dray said: “TXGB will drive bookings for the hundreds of thousands of tourism businesses in England by making it easier for them to access new markets and ultimately more customers.
“England’s tourism product will be on show internationally to global distributors and their customers, promoting the latest tourism products, services and experiences, driving bookings and inbound tourism across the country, boosting regional economies.”