Advantage Travel Partnership has relaunched its Advantage Holidays dynamic-packaging programme for members with a new site, an enhanced programme and new features.
The relaunched Advantage Holidays includes long-haul holidays and cruises for the first time, a new booking platform, rewards scheme, recommendations and extended deposit scheme.
The consortium has been working on the relaunch for a year after consulting members, some of whom have been involved in trials of the platform.
Advantage Holidays launched in August 2016, offering 41 city-break and beach destinations in Europe, including Iceland, and Dubai.
The relaunch sees Advantage’s Atol licence increased from 12,000 to 16,000 passengers.
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Lee Ainsworth, head of Advantage Holidays, said: “We launched to enable members to dynamically package with Atol protection. Being an Atol holder increases risk and our members need to reduce risk.
“There was a really good response. When we consulted members at the end of 2018, it became clear they wanted [us to add] USA city breaks and fly-cruise and stay.
“We also released we needed to invest in the technology and a new platform.”
Ainsworth said: “The site has been completely updated. We’ve made the technology more intuitive and introduced a new booking journey.
“Members helped us develop it and make it easy to navigate. The site is geared to being able to sit with a client and share with them.”
The platform includes a new Advantage Recommends feature which aims “to cut through the mass of choice online” when selecting a hotel.
Ainsworth said: “We’ve looked at 850 properties across 100 destinations and profiled their quality and standards, amenities, reviews and use by members.”
The Advantage Rewards scheme will see members accrue points for bookings on a Love2Shop card which can be used online and at 150 major high street retailers.
Advantage has also extended its existing deposit scheme to long-haul bookings. A £50-per-person deposit will remain on short-haul holidays, with deposits of £150 per person for US city breaks. Cruise booking deposits will vary from £150 per person for Europe and Baltic cruises to £250 for the rest of the world.
Kelly Cookes, Advantage leisure director, said: “Standardised deposits don’t really exist on dynamically packaged product. Usually you would pay for a low-cost flight in full.”
She added: “We will also look at tactical deposits.”
Cookes joined Advantage in October from the Thomas Cook-owned Freedom Travel Group.