UK HOTSPOT HOTELS SET TO ACTIVATE BOOKINGS IN 2002

In a tough year for tourism last year, Active Hotels helped hoteliers to maintain reservation levels by capturing new bookings on the hotels’ behalf and a UK sales campaign in January will target more hoteliers in key resorts and visitor ‘hot-spots’ across the country.

The new campaign will explain how hoteliers can access Active Hotel’s distribution network of over 100 partner websites to promote up-to-date room rates and availability worldwide and in real-time. With over 100,000 travel agents and 15,000 websites through whom hotels can sell rooms, it can be a logistical nightmare for an individual hotelier to try and do this alone and then also arrange to pay commissions to whichever website or agent has secured the booking. Active Hotels lightens the burden of marketing for many hoteliers who get a marketing service, easy to use technology and agreed commission rates in one bundle.

The campaign aims to demonstrate just how easy it is for hoteliers to work with Active Hotels by having a PC with internet access to kick start the whole process. For those hotels with websites, Active Hotels activates the site so that it becomes part of the bookings process and not just a static, promotional tool.

One hotel group that benefited from Active Hotels service last year was the Britannia Hotels group. “Active Hotels service was a key resource for the hotel during last year,” explains Tim Ternent, Britannia Hotels’ Internet Manager. “We were able to promote the hotel to a wealth of new customers and this had a much welcomed, positive effect on our bottom line. It’s very ease to use the technology over the internet and it enables us to update our prices and availability in thousands of places automatically,” he adds.

Active Hotels has already received enquiries about the availability of more hotels in locations across the UK from potential guests who want to book over the internet so Dan Smith, Active Hotels’ Sales & Operations Manager, has identified more hoteliers in these key tourist cities, towns and counties to target with the new campaign in January. Dan believes that more hoteliers will want to capitalise on the benefits of working with Active Hotels in 2002 when they realise the positive impact Active Hotels has had on booking levels for its client hotels last year. “Through what was a turbulent year in the tourist industry, we helped many hoteliers to maintain booking levels and also source bookings from new areas, leaving the hoteliers to get on with the business of running the hotel and looking after their guests,” said Dan.