International Hub
market in many areas of the world and many countries have not yet embraced online distribution. There are a lot of territories that we are going after.”
Remy says Travco now has connections to more than £10 billion of hotel stock. Its inventory has in excess of 100 countries, with more than 12,000 hotel partners. “We are contracting 50 new hotels every week. We will have 15,000 by 2020 and 20,000 by 2025. The company has been running for 30 years. For the first 20-25 years we were regarded as a European specialist, but then we started global expansion, with a strong focus on the Middle East, North America and Asia. We need to expand in these areas, so by the end of the year we will have an office in Vancouver to handle North America.”
The wholesale sector keeps growing, with more and more hotels on its books
that gap bigger,” says Horne. It is unclear which company can lay claim to the third-place spot as many are private companies that do not publish figures, but, meanwhile, Webjet is keen to grow its B2B business in an expanding market: “The wholesale sector I think will grow because specialism is increasing in the industry,” he says. He cites WebBeds’ deal with Thomas Cook, which will see it contract all non-branded Cook properties in 2019. “A few years ago, no one would have said a vertically integrated tour operator would have done that. There are other examples – we have smaller-scale deals with Eurostar and Trailfinders. We will see people focus on distribution and come to us for procurement.”
Market giants
Others are in agreement that the sector is growing and a target for consolidation. Travco UK (TP308) remains family-owned despite a £200 million turnover and sales of more than two million room nights in 2016. Samuel Remy, global sales manager, says the market is not without difficulties despite this success: “We have two big conglomerates in the game – we
Ahmad Alkatib, Travellanda
are fighting against monsters.” He predicts “some minor mergers in the next few years”, but adds: “Travco won’t be part of it. We are pretty much the last independent family-owned company.” He is confident about Travco’s future, as he is about the sector: “Ten years ago, people were saying that wholesalers would be gone in 10 years, but we are expanding – the B2B market is still very much in control of the outbound
From strength to strength More proof of how dynamic this sector is comes from another UK brand, Travellanda (TP320). It will use World Travel Market London to showcase its new range of 18,000 activities, added this summer to its portfolio of more than 300,000 hotels. Ahmad Alkatib and two other ex-JacTravel employees formed Travellanda only eight years ago. “It has been a very fast train ride from there,” he says. “We are mainly a hotel wholesaler, but clients were saying they needed to book transfers, so we added them. This year, there were a lot of requests to add activities, so we try to feature them with most of our hotels.” The brand remains B2B-only and has offices in London, Istanbul and Bangkok. “In the next two to three years we want to focus a lot more on the Middle East and South America, possibly opening offices there.” Alkatib describes the UK as “probably the most saturated market” for companies like his, but adds: “I always say there is room for more, because no matter how many times we see a new entry, they manage to succeed. We made sure we focused not just on the UK business. We had to get to other areas where wholesalers do not go and find different types of clients.” He predicts a wave of
Bed banks distribute accommodation and related products to the travel trade
consolidation in the sector following the Hotelbeds’ acquisition spree. “I really think this is just the beginning. It will get to the point where one large wholesaler dominates the market.”
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