Hoteliers.com recently launched with a different distribution model than most Internet providers. They are a 3rd party distributor, however, contrary to most of their competitors, they also allow their consumers to go from their website directly to the chain website, and they give out the complete hotel contact information to the customers on their site. On top of that they work on low fixed monthly fees in stead of commissions per booking.

When launching their services for hotels six months ago, one of the first steps they made was to allow RateTiger to build an XML connection to their extranet. “For us this seemed the best move to ensure that our rates and availability are always up to date. Especially when penetrating a market, hotels are not easily convinced to close a contract with yet another distributor of their rooms. Many hotels simply can’t handle managing more extranets in their operations. On top of that even if they do have the time, we know that our extranet will not always be updated first” according Erik Baumann, Director of Hoteliers.com

“To overcome these challenges we started working with RateTiger. Our rates and allotments are always updated by hotels that work with RateTiger, together with all other channels. On top of that contracting became a lot easier then we expected. Naturally for the hotels that work with RateTiger there is no additional operational task when starting to work with us, however RateTiger also has a solid reputation in the market and they actually bring us leads as well that allow us to penetrate the market at high speed” Erik Baumann added.

Commenting on their relationship, Remko West of eRevMax mentioned that ”Hotels are being confronted new opportunities in Internet distribution. They are thinking about distribution costs and Hoteliers.com stepped into this mindset with an attractive model, which they launched in the Benelux to start with. The model is inexpensive and the marketing that Hoteliers.com does can actually be converted into direct marketing as traffic to the hotels’ own site is being allowed. “

“I feel our cooperation works two ways. Naturally providers have an advantage when they can count on always having competitive rates, that are always updated and that contracting hotels becomes somewhat easier. On the other side, the more providers we work with, the more attractive our system becomes for hotels to buy. Therefore our relationship with providers is extremely valuable to us. We can support each others growth” said Remko West.

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