Leisure sales initiative shows early promise

Last November’s World Travel Market saw the launch of Great Hotels Luxury Network (GHLN), a ground-breaking co-operation between high-end tour operators and worldwide luxury hotels.

GHLN aims to add value to hotels by taking their FIT rates and distributing them to luxury agents and operators whose size would not have warranted a direct contract. This brings incremental leisure demand with minimal cost, as GHLN effectively acts as a central point of demand and billing for hundreds of operators.

Agents and operators will profit by being able to access preferential rates and allocation with a diverse, quality controlled global portfolio of hotels.

“The global holiday market has so far been ruled by the Big Four (First Choice, MyTravel, Thomas Cook and TUI) who traditionally contract large allocations of standard rooms with a number of hotels in popular destinations. What makes the concept of the Luxury Network so interesting is that hotels are able to sell their higher room categories to a diversified network of smaller operators. These smaller players make up an increasing share of the demand for luxury travel, yet their very diversity is what makes them so hard for hotels to contract with directly without expanding their sales force,” says Geneviève Materne, Director of Global Sales.

GHLN uses its own web-based technology platform developed by GHO to efficiently distribute room inventory, thus making the process cost-effective to operate and seamless for all parties involved.

The team has attended trade fairs in Cannes, Monte Carlo, and Madrid to recruit potential members and will continue to expand the network steadily throughout the year, in time to sell the summer. So far, 120 hotels in key destinations have signed up and provided preferential rates for 2007, and over 100 niche operators have applied to join. Rates will start being loaded into the system after ITB Berlin and by the official launch of the network in June, 300 hotels and 400 operators will be onboard.

For further information please visit www.ghorg.com/ghln.html or
contact Genevieve Materne on gmaterne@ghorg.com for any enquiries