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Great Hotels of the World, the London-based hotel sales and marketing alliance has launched a new service to hotels enabling them to manage online travel agent (OTA) contracts more efficiently. Great Hotels of the World’s ‘Value Added Channel Manager’ will also give member hotels the opportunity to take advantage of their chain level agreements thus immediately opening up incremental demand and improved merchandising terms.
As an extension of the value added channel manager concept, Great Hotels of the World are also offering pre-packaged channel groups to assist hotels in targeting specific leisure niche markets such as Golf, Spa, Romance, Honeymoon, Heritage, Lakes & Mountains, Art & Design, Gourmet and Weekend.
Carly Gotz, group director sales & marketing at Great Hotels of the World comments, “We realise that independent hotels have difficulty in contracting with OTA’s, that’s why we’re offering them access to our pre-negotiated, preferred agreements. Channel management has historically been a product that simply allows hotels to manage OTA contracts more efficiently but the relationships we have in place guarantee member hotels a framework from which to better sell their inventory. In today’s competitive market, hotels need to feature prominently on an OTA’s website with the correct rate, policies and offers in place. Failure to do any one of these could result in the hotel not being sold. By appearing under niche-specific sections of OTA’s newsletters, websites and marketing campaigns they are better placed to inspire travellers who know the experience they want, but not necessarily the destination.”
The ‘Value Added Channel Manager’ concept is part of Great Hotels of the World’s new sales and marketing strategy which also includes brand consolidation, the vision of creating ‘Niche Content Hubs’, the introduction of ‘Pure’ niche collections and the launch of a set of brand new ‘Pure’ niche websites in the New Year.
Theodore is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of TravelDailyNews Media Network; his responsibilities include business development and planning for TravelDailyNews long-term opportunities.
