A growing number of hotels are being “freed from the shackles of exclusivity” with an operator, which will benefit both the hotel and the consumer, Jet2holidays chief Steve Heapy has declared.
Speaking on a Travel Weekly webcast, Heapy said hoteliers are no longer seeing the benefit in working exclusively with one operator as it pushes prices up and limits sales opportunities.
He said Jet2holidays, which has added more than 600 hotels to its portfolio since 2019, has benefitted from the trend which began several years ago but accelerated during the pandemic.
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“We’re getting more hotels all the time; hotels that have, perhaps, been in long-term exclusive relationships with other tour operators and they’ve had enough and want to be freed from the shackles of exclusivity,” Heapy said.
“It’s not great for the hotel because if you’re in an exclusive relationship then you basically have one customer and it’s not great for the customer because an exclusivity is a monopoly and monopolies tend to charge quite high prices for things.
“I think hotels are realising that a more stable business model is one where you have lots of customers so we’re getting a lot of hotels that are now asking to work with us and we’re increasing our portfolio.
“It’s a trend that has been ongoing for several years but was accelerated during the pandemic.”