FOLLOWING a global merger
toward the end of last year,
where GTA and Tourico Holidays
joined the Hotelbeds Group, GTA’s
retail arm will now be consolidated
under the newly refreshed Bedsonline
retail brand.
The move will provide travel agents
with an enlarged range of exclusively
contracted content – increasing from
55 000 to 170 000 available hotels.
Shaun Beckley, GTA area sales
manager for Africa and Indian Ocean,
said the GTA retail brand would
fall away to be replaced with the
Bedsonline brand, which is currently
being launched in South Africa.
“It makes strategic and practical
sense for us to continue to develop
our travel agent proposition under
one integrated, global platform and
brand,” said Carlos Munoz, md
bedbank at Hotelbeds Group. He
listed increased revenue and profits
for the group’s partners; improved
functionality; the enlarged portfolio;
and increased opportunities to upsell
high-yielding complementary travel
services as benefits resulting from
the consolidation.
“An extensive outreach programme
is already under way to inform all
existing clients of GTA’s retail brand
regarding the changes. Clients will
have sufficient time to transition at
their own pace and both workshops
and technical support will be
on hand to support a seamless
migration,” said Shaun.
Bedsonline’s parent group was
the only distributor to operate its
own cloud-based open-source
data centre, which handled up to
1,5 billion searches per day,
explained Shaun.
He added that, while
previously GTA and
Hotelbeds managed both
wholesale and retail clients
in South Africa, the company
had now restructured,
separating these divisions
more clearly. Two individual
teams will now manage retail
and wholesale channels
separately.
Shaun said the company
had identified Africa and
South Africa as good growth
markets from both a sales
and contracting perspective.
Toward the end of 2017,
Webjet, another large B2B
hotel aggregator, acquired
JacTravel and totalstay.
The company also created
a separate bed bank
division called WebBeds
toward the middle of 2018,
consolidating JacTravel,
totalstay, sunhotels and FIT
RUUMS under one brand.
