Hotelbeds launches mobile site for activities

TUI-owned bed bank Hotelbeds will launch a mobile website next week to enable holidaymakers to book a wide range of activities in resorts online.

It will be the first time that the Palma-based company has sold direct to the consumer, but managing director Carlos Munoz said it was not trying to take business away from online travel agents and hoteliers who are its core customers.

OTAs who send their customers a link to the website, Guidego, in their pre-departure information and hoteliers who encourage guests to book activities on the site when they arrive will be paid commission on any bookings they generate.

"We are giving OTAs and hoteliers the tools to book an entire range of products that they haven’t been able to book before," said Munoz. "We don’t want to sell direct to the consumer, we don’t want to do battle on Google, but it is about giving them a choice."

The activities market in Europe is estimated to be worth €37 billion, in North America its value is around $24 billion, yet Hotelbeds said due to the fragmented nature of the market, which consists of thousands of businesses – a third of which generate less than €750,000 a year – it has been a challenge to bring product online.

The company set up a dedicated 40-strong Activities unit 18 months ago and now offers 6,000 activities in 430 destinations, which range from low yield hop-on, hop-off bus tours to higher yield products such as hot air balloon rides, helicopter tours of the Grand Canyon and theme park tickets in Orlando.

Its main competitors in the UK are Attraction World and Attraction Tickets Direct, but Munoz said there was room in the market for more players. "The more of us out there, the better," he said. "Everybody is pretty small, but the opportunity is huge."

While many of those selling attractions focus on the Florida theme parks, Munoz said Hotelbeds’ USP was offering a more diverse range of attractions, such as elephant rides, ticket to football matches in Barcelona and Madrid and even entrance passes to sell-out nights in the Space nightclub in Ibiza, where it held its second annual European MarketHub conference, attended by over 300 industry delegates, this week.

Its activity sales are rising twice as fast as hotel bookings, said transfer and activity bank director Paul Anthony, but from a much smaller base.  For the year to date, Hotelbeds’ total business from the UK is up 34% and for 2014 it is expecting 20% growth in Europe, which accounts for 50% of all room nights booked. 

Its mobile activities site will be piloted this summer in just two destinations, Tenerife and Barcelona, before being rolled out to other countries over the winter and summer 2015.