Travelport Acquires Hospitality Distribution System Hotelzon

Travelport announced on 12 June that it has acquired Hotelzon, a leading, B2B hotel distribution technology provider, for an undisclosed sum.

Hotelzon offers services for corporate business travelers, hotels and travel professionals. The company was established in 1972 and is headquartered in London, UK, and also has offices in Finland, Sweden and Romania. It has been owned by Esa Karppinen for 28 years.

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 travelers.

“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 meta search technology,” Gordon Wilson, President and CEO of Travelport, said.

Hotel booking nights through Hotelzon booking systems were approximately 1 million (approximately 100 million euros) in 2013.

“With Hotelzon, we will now be able to offer special corporate negotiated rates and other offerings from independent hotels to corporations and their travelers as well as ensure a broader capability in the hotel distribution space for our TMC partners,” Mr. Wilson added.

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 behavior, 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.

Travelport’s acquisition of Hotelzon follows other investments it has made as part of its “Beyond Air” strategy including the acquisition of Sprice.com in 2010, which enabled the launch of Travelport Rooms and More, its B2B booking engine focused on leisure travel. Travelport now offers approximately 600,000 individual hotel properties for real time display and integrated bookings.