Travelport Acquires Hotelzon

Travelport has acquired Hotelzon, a B2B hotel distribution technology provider, from former owner Esa Karppinen.

The investment forms part of Travelport’s ongoing strategy to redefine and strengthen its hotel offering to both corporations and travel management companies (TMCs). Specifically, the acquisition also supports Travelport’s drive to make booking independent hotels easier for business travellers.

Travelport’s focus over the last few years on growing its “Beyond Air” offering, which includes hotels, car rental and payments, has been in response to the growth opportunities it has identified in these sectors as well as feedback from corporations, hotel providers and travel agency customers.

According to Euromonitor, global hotel booking value is projected to grow 6% per annum from $480 billion in 2013 to $600 billion in 2017. The hotel industry, however, remains highly fragmented, with the top ten global hotel chains representing less than 20% of room revenue in every region except North America, Australasia and the Middle East and Africa.

With only 30% to 50% of corporate hotel buying going through TMCs and many bookings still being booked direct by business travellers themselves, the Hotelzon acquisition is designed to provide both corporations and Travelport-connected travel agencies with a best-in-class booking tool with extensive independent hotel content. The Hotelzon solution also works well when a hotel booking is not an 'add on' to an air booking. This is particularly the case for travel within Continental Europe, where many business trips actually take place in the traveller’s home country or to bordering countries, and trains and cars are often the preferred method of transport rather than flights.

Hotelzon will continue to operate under its existing brand and be led by incumbent CEO, Jani Kaskinen, who will report into Niklas Andréen who heads up Travelport’s Global Hospitality, Car & Advertising business.

The acquisition complements and further strengthens Travelport’s current hotel offering to corporations and TMCs by providing the following benefits:

- Expanded hotel content in both Travelport’s and Hotelzon’s booking platforms: bringing an additional 30,000 hotel properties into Travelport’s Travel Commerce Platform, in particular, new European independent and small hotel chain properties that were previously unavailable. Likewise, Travelport’s hotel content will be made available to Hotelzon’s travel agency and corporate customers.

- New industry-leading technology, including Hotelzon’s corporate self-booking tool. The enhanced functionality will allow Travelport to more effectively serve both the expanding needs of its corporate customers, in a space that is of growing importance to the overall travel sector, as well as its core TMC partners.

- Best-in-class extranet capabilities that allow both travel agents and corporate travel managers to access independent hotel content, including their specially negotiated rates with these independent hotels.

- Heightened hotel and corporate travel expertise and skills gained through Hotelzon’s management as well as its skilled team of hotel technology developers.

- New insights into hotel booking behaviour, including the needs of today’s corporate travel buyer and traveller, particularly around where hotel bookings are made without being attached to an air booking.

Gordon Wilson, President and CEO of Travelport, said, “This acquisition is part of our realizing our strategic plan to redefine travel commerce, with a particular focus on growing in both the hotel and corporate travel space. As part of our Beyond Air vision, Hotelzon is the perfect complement to our existing capabilities with the large, global chain hotels which we are progressively connecting to our system via direct XML capabilities and our aggregation of unmatched retail rates through our Rooms and More offering based on metasearch  technology. With Hotelzon, we will now be able to offer special corporate negotiated rates and other offerings from independent hotels to corporations and their travelllers as well as ensure a broader capability in the hotel distribution space for our TMC partners.”