Demand for far away holidays from agents has prompted lowcostbeds.com to expand its long haul buying team.
The company is also preparing to launch daily deals through the trade after admitting being slow off the mark in the emrging sector.
The appointment of Steve Silver as a new senior long haul buyer from Complete Orlando Holidays came as the company revealed increased long-haul booking figures for the past three months.
This showed Antigua to be up 300% year on year; St Lucia up 140%; Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam up by more than 126%.
A new South America and Hawaii programme has also been released.
This follows the company recently announcing expansion in the Caribbean, Far East and Australia, as well as increased capacity to the US and Middle East.
New destinations include Kenya, Gambia, Maldives, Mauritius and South America, with many new hotels sourced from international chains such as Centara, Hilton and Barceló.
Michelle Brackstone has been promoted to the role of head of late sales to drive new ‘daily deals’ that the company plans to promote and sell through the trade.
Group director of sales Paul Riches said: “The market has changed considerably and many sales are now made as an ‘impulse buy’, driven through the emergence of even more deal led websites.
“We have not been quick enough to react to this in the past few months but Michelle’s new appointment will improve our ability to work with trade partners, on daily deals.”
Lowcostbeds has more than 20,000 long haul hotels available on the website and through its XML link.
“Since we started our expansion into long haul, the response from the trade has been fantastic,” Riches added.
“We have quickly established ourselves within the long haul market and this new appointment will allow us to rapidly expand the number of directly contracted hotels that we offer.”