B2B bedbank Ace Rooms is to launch a marketing campaign to attract more travel agent and tour operator customers following a successful start to 2022.
Established 15 years ago and now offering more than 60,000 hotels worldwide, the company enhanced its technology and customer service during the pandemic.
It said the value of its bookings for the first four months of this year was up by 178% on the same period in 2019.
Ace Rooms has introduced an out-of-hours service for agents’ clients and a second-generation version of its mobile app will be launched this summer.
Paul Pau, Ace Rooms managing director, said: “Lots of agents have been booking with us for years, but once the pandemic hit we took the opportunity to think about how we did things and how we could help them as much as possible.”
Commenting on the new out-of-hours service, he said: “Hotel booking vouchers normally include the agent’s number, but that’s not ideal for either the agent or client when an issue needs to be resolved outside of normal working hours.
“So we gave the clients a number they could call 24/7, 365 days a year. It takes the pressure off the agents; the clients see it as a service their agent provides – and the number is always answered by humans.”
Improvements to the app will allow agents to view and manage existing bookings.
“Our mobile app is central to our development plans. We introduced the first-generation version late in 2019 and it is accounting for a growing proportion of our bookings, so we can’t wait to launch the updated version to our agent customers,” said Pau.
The company already works with operators such as Exsus Travel, ITC Travel and Brightsun Travel, and hopes to broaden its customer base among individual agents, consortia and operators with the digital marketing campaign that starts later this month.