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Data released by Abacus International has
indicated a 111% increase, year on year Q1 2008 vs Q1 2009, for
the top 30 hotels booked through the Abacus GDS system.
The majority - 66% - of these hotels were
located in China, illustrating how important this market continues
to fuel growth in the travel industry across Asia Pacific, despite
the current economic climate.
Importantly this trend also represents a seed
change in the agent’s recognition of the increasing value of less
traditional agency services such as hotel rooms, car hire and rail
tickets.
Brett Henry, Vice President, Marketing for
Abacus International said, “It is both interesting and
heartening to see such strong increases in bookings on the Abacus
GDS system for so many hotels, especially those in China. Worth
noting is the Holiday Inn Binhai with increases in bookings of
over 1000%. Meanwhile other China based hotels, Traders Hotel
Shenyang and the Shangri La Guangzhou, also recorded growth in
bookings of more than 200% in the first quarter of 2009.”
The uplift trend for bookings indicates the
growing importance of China as a business and leisure destination
for domestic and international travellers.
Abacus recently launched Abacus Car and Abacus Rail
solutions which help agents provide full details of price and availability
of tickets as well as enabling instant reservations and ticket
purchases, all through the Abacus system.
“At Abacus we are absolutely focused on
developing solutions which can be considered a ‘win-win’ for the
travel supplier and agent alike. The increased sales of
non-traditional travel products represented in the data we have
released today supports a recent trend of travel agents
increasingly moving to become one-stop-shops, building on their
flight bookings capability by embracing other areas of potential
revenue. This is an extremely positive development for the
supplier, the agent and the traveller, not to mention the industry
as a whole,” Mr Henry added.
See
other recent news regarding:
Airlines,
Aviation,
Flights,
First Class,
Business Class,
GDS,
Miles,
Hotels,
Promotions,
New Hotels,
Visitor Arrivals,
Cruises,
Free Deals,
Abacus,
Traffic,
Performance,
June 2009
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