Interview: David Yates, managing director of 4oceans

Wednesday, 31 Jan, 2003 0

Reservations company 4oceans is planning to expand in the UK after becoming the largest online distributor in China.

4oceans formed a joint venture company with the Beijing Tourist Board to build a web-booking engine and now has 3,000 agents and 2,000 three to five star hotels in China on its books.

Managing director David Yates (pictured) said it was working with the Hotel Booking Association in the UK and has plans to sign up to 30% of its agent members.

4oceans claims to offer agents a web-based booking system at a fraction of the cost of signing up to a global distribution system.

The company is targeting smaller travel agencies that are not connected to a GDS.

“Our main reason for entering the UK was to promote inbound tourism to China,but we have access to thousands of hotels at a much lower cost than using a GDS,” Yates told TravelMole.

“We are offering agents the chance to get into a global market. For an agent the cost of using us is about a fifth of the cost of a GDS and for a hotel, it’s about a tenth of the cost.”

Agents either pay a monthly transaction fee of around £10 per user, depending on the size of the retailer, or a transaction fee of £1 per reservation.

Unlike a GDS, 4oceans does not offer airline seats or car hire, but Yates said it was working to change this.

“We’ve had discussions with two or three GDSs to integrate airlines and car hire into our system, so we’ve got a full offering for agents,” said Yates.

“The discussions have been positive because we are not taking business from the GDSs. We are helping to expand their product to new agents who don’t have GDSs.”

4oceans had planned to float on the stock market in 2003, but Yates admitted that in the current depressed market, this would probably be delayed.

“We launched in the UK last April and the aim was to float within 12 months,” said Yates.

“But we’ve now attracted private investment and will go to the market at some stage in the future when the time is right.”