5 2 3 STORIES HOT
Icelolly to launch ’Uber for agents’
Medhotels will
cease operations on December 31
Thomas Cook to close Medhotels
Amie Keeley
amie.keeley@
travelweekly.co.uk
Thomas Cook is to close its in-house bed bank Medhotels by the end of the year.
The move follows deals Cook
signed with Expedia and Sunhotels parent Webjet to take over its contracting of third-party hotels. Medhotels will cease trading on December 31. It will continue to accept and honour bookings departing up to that date. The bed bank contracts 2,000
properties, most of which are sun and beach hotels. Medhotels is mainly sold by third-party agents. Around 10 Switzerland-based
staff are affected by the closure. Cook struck a partnership
agreement with Webjet subsidiary Sunhotels in 2016 which saw Sunhotels take over the sourcing and contracting of around 3,000 sun and beach hotels last summer. It said the partnership had
delivered a 51% increase in overall bed bank bookings. Last year the operator revealed
a strategic alliance with Expedia that will see the online travel giant become Cook’s preferred provider
of hotels for its city and domestic holiday business. Cook’s city and domestic hotel bookings in the Nordic region have started to move to Expedia, with the UK and Belgium to follow in July. Cook acquired Medhotels from
lastminute.com in 2009 for an undisclosed
sum.The acquisition made it the market-leading accommodation-only supplier in the UK, having also bought consumer bed bank Hotels4U for £21.8 million in 2008. Medhotels was at the centre of
a landmark ruling which found it liable for £7 million in VAT under the Tour Operators’ Margin Scheme (Toms) on the grounds that it operated as a principal, and not an agent, from the end of 2004 to June 2007. The Supreme Court later overturned the ruling, which was seen as crucial for many travel firms that dynamically package. Thomas Hohn, chief of complementary at Thomas Cook, said: “The closure of the Medhotels business is a natural evolution of our strategy. The transformation of our complementary [third-party] hotel partnerships will simplify our processes and give customers a better online experience.”
Lee Hayhurst
lee.hayhurst@travelweekly.co.uk
High street travel agents are being invited to sign up for a new ‘Uber for agents’ service from holiday price comparison site
Icelolly.com.
Icelolly Local will encourage
customers looking online for complex holidays such as cruise, multi-centre or escorted tours to visit a nearby agency in-store to add a more human touch to their holiday search. Location data from customers’ phones will be used to identify local agencies in a bid to help bricks-and-mortar shops generate leads through price comparison. The leads generated will be tailored to agencies’ areas of expertise. Icelolly said the idea came out of
an innovation session focused on making holiday research more
personal and
inspirational. Ross
Matthews, chief marketing officer, said: “We kept coming back to the human touch that only travel agents can deliver. “Connecting local
travel agents with the right customers at the right time in their travel research and planning journey makes absolute sense.
For every person who likes to book online, there are others who appreciate the expert advice of high street travel agents.” Matthews said on-demand mobile services were increasingly popular in other sectors. “Everyone is familiar with Uber,” he said. “Think of Icelolly Local as Uber for travel agents.” Icelolly will trial Local this year
with a select number of agents before a full rollout. The company has yet to set commercial terms, but it is likely agents will pay a fee based on performance, such as per lead or per conversion. Icelolly, which generates
40 million search queries a year from about 20 million visitors, said holiday planning had “become a little robotic”. Matthews added: “Our aim is to connect digital audiences to high street travel agents in a way nobody has done before. There has been a huge shift to mobile travel research, and we want to make metasearch accessible to large and small travel agents alike.” Agents can
register interest by emailing local@icelolly. com.
Icelolly
Local aims to steer
customers to high street
agents 28 June 2018
travelweekly.co.uk 5
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