The Vertical Group has unveiled a new direct marketing tool for overseas hotels looking to increase their UK distribution.
VHI offers hotels a way of selling room nights with flights as part of a package using Vertical’s Atol bonding and Abta membership through the Freedom Travel Group, which it is a member of.
The system can also display packaged results with existing retailers the hotels work with but allows them to be less reliant on their tour operator partners.
Peter Healey, Vertical group chief executive, said: “This is a result-based offer which will help hoteliers top build their brand, and reach their audience with a full support team based in the UK, therefore no language issues.”
VHI has been piloted with 14 hotels including Sani Resort, Aldemar Hotels and Cordial Hotels. “This is a product that means the hotels’ distribution can be totally under their own control. We facilitate them becoming their own tour operator,” Healey added.
“Nobody else at the moment gives them that end to end product. Typically we have been able to show this increased the amount of business from their websites by three times.”
Healey also said some hotels already using the system are seeing 40% of their occupancy being filled by VHI. “And they are full from one end of the summer to the other,” Healey added.
Partner hotels add a ‘Book Hotel’ and ‘Package Holiday’ buttons to their websites that clicks through to an external Vertical booking page where other products can be added like flights and transfers.
- More from World Travel Market at travelweekly.co.uk/wtm2010