Hotelbeds Eyes a Viable Wholesaler Path in the Shadows of Priceline and Expedia
Photo Credit: Hotelbeds filled about 25 million room nights last year by suppling hotels to travel agencies, tour operators, and airlines. Joan Vilà (right) , executive chairman of Hotelbeds Group, is shown with Tourico Holidays CEO Uri Argov when announcing their merger on February 7, 2017. Hotelbeds Group
Skift Take
Since 2016, the quiet wholesaler marketplaces for hotel supply have become noisy as private equity firms invested $2.9 billion to make Hotelbeds Group a market leader. Expect more consolidation.
Everyone knows that hotels increasingly rely on two conglomerates — Expedia Inc. and Priceline Group — to distribute their inventory globally to a large chunk of leisure travelers. Some hotels rely on the giants to fill as many as half of their rooms on any given night.
Yet an alternative distribution path may be gaining small but noticeable momentum — namely, business-to-business (B2B) marketplaces.
The largest of these is Hotelbeds, which distributes rooms at wholesale rates to about 35,000 retail travel agencies, small online travel agencies (such as Getaroom and Travel Republic), tour operators who build vacation packages (such as TUI Deutschland), and airlines who upsell passengers with accommodation offers (such as EasyJet).
In spring 2016, the B2B accommodation sector heated up when private equity firm Cinven and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board led a consortium that bought parent company Hotelbeds Group from tour operator TUI for $1.32 billion (€1.165 b
