Hotelbeds makes major stake investment in WTM London

In this context, Travel2latam spoke with Leo Moulinas, Marketing & Digital Presence Director of HotelBeds and Valentina Russo, Regional Marketing Manager Europe .

I wanted you to tell me about your participation in an event of this magnitude that it represents for a company.

For us it is obviously the most important trade show in the sector of the year. We have three types of opportunities in my opinion. The first is brand building. We are going to build the reputation, the brand of the company. It is very important to have a stand, a presence to do that. It seems to me that we do a good job for HBX Group. Second chance for me is, obviously what we're doing with you now, is developing relationships with journalists at media because there's a lot of activity right now. And the third for me would be business development, obviously finding our clients, partners and finding new ones at the same time.

And I also see that there are a multitude of people from the company who would like if you could give us a detail of how many personnel they brought to a fair like this.

The number of Hotelbeds people working, we have 150 or so. So yes, it is a huge investment for our company.

It is a very important bet. And to have a dimension, here the meetings that are taking place are for the United Kingdom or are they for Europe in general or at a global level for the whole world.

They are global for everyone. In addition, we are now communicating with our group's new brand that we just announced, HBX Group, that is, it is this Umbrella brand that represents the entire group and we have rebuilt the entire brand architecture a little, so the brand architecture at the level global, simplifying it and now we have focused on the four commercial brands we have, which are: Hotelbeds, Bedsonline, Roiback and TravelStack. Each one develops a specific segment, so we have the Wholesaler part, with Hotelbeds, we are targeting tour operators, airlines, loyalty companies in the wholesale environment. Then we have the retail brand, which is Bedsonline, for travel agencies. We also have Roiback, which is for hoteliers to help them in marketing and direct sales for hoteliers, and TravelStack, which is our B2B2C brand.

I would like to have more or less a vision from you of what this season has represented for Hotel Vets and what the idea is for 2024.

The season, especially last summer, was a total success, really. And what we see is that we are going to continue. The idea for us, with all those brands that Valentina has talked about, is to say that now the vision for the group is that we are an ecosystem, an ecosystem of B2B products and services, totally interconnected and thus we have a very interesting offer for a lot of people, in the end a lot of players. The idea for us, to continue for the next season, would be to develop the ecosystem and really at the brand marketing level to help with the positioning of the total and interconnected ecosystem of HBX Group.

The year is already ending, they have made a large investment. How do you plan for 2024 in terms of participation in events, being close to business partners in so many countries, such a diverse company? Tell me about it.

We have a calendar of events, we do the most important trade shows, obviously the WTM in London, we go to the IPW in the United States, we do ITB in Asia and also others in other parts of the world. So we have the schedule, a dedicated team and we do it that way. We also have our events called market hubs, we have three per year and it is really the signature event, which means that for us it is very important because it is more than just an event for the clients, obviously we do have a little entertainment but it is all about leadership. , that is, we are going to talk about things that we see in the industry in the future. We have a lot of speakers like Google, Amazon are coming. We have the next edition in Bangkok in two weeks. And we are going to receive almost 250 clients, the most important clients. But what we want to do as an ecosystem is not only have it as an event to do a little commercial activity, but it is really the name of the event. It's really bringing together all of our customers and partners in the industry and really having quality conversations with them.

I take this opportunity, since we are in Europe and specifically in London, to ask you what your situation is like in these markets, in the United Kingdom and in Europe in particular, what what is produced in a market means to you on a global level. as important as this.

For us, the UK has historically always been a very strong, very powerful market. When the company was born it was actually our main market of origin, it was the UK market. We are based in Spain, the company was born as one, it was incredible because it was born as a startup and then grew exponentially until we reached where we are now. We have now become a truly global player after the acquisition in 2018 of two other global companies. But yes, we continue with this very powerful market in Europe. We have others that are being developed further, and different marketing and communication strategies in different markets, depending on the maturity of each market. Spain and the UK are very powerful, there are others that are more emerging, but we have coverage in all European markets.