In this context, Travel2latam spoke with Pippa Williamson, Senior Vice President of Global Sales at HBX Group.
What are your expectations and goals for attending WTM?
For us, WTM is a crucial moment in the calendar. HBX Group is a key player in the ecosystem to be able to provide solutions to our partners and this is the perfect time to sit down and put together a strategy on how we are going to help them achieve their goals.
You have a great stand here, how is the team here made up?
We have our entire team present here across all functions and disciplines, whether it's our finance, support services, IT connectivity or procurement teams representing the 250,000+ hotels we sell. We have teams working alongside our customers and suppliers to support you. We have approximately 60,000 different distributors around the world, and some of them are also present at this show.
So it's an incredible time to connect with our customers and suppliers and gain insight into what's happening in the industry, to really make sure we can add value to the travel and technology space.
What are the main new features that the company is introducing?
We have had a bit of a change over the last 12 months. Last year around this time we launched the HBX Group brand which brought together all our different brands: Hotelbeds, Bedsonline and Roiback.
Roiback is our direct marketing services channel for hotels. Hotelbeds is the distributor of hotels and other accommodation providers offering inventory to online travel agencies, travel agents and tour operators. Bedsonline offers services to retail travel agents and a curated selection of hotels, experiences and mobility options to enhance the agents' offering.
In addition to that, we are launching new product lines in fintech and insurtech services so that we can deliver better frictionless experiences to our partners and travelers and consumers around the world.
We are almost at the end of this season. How has 2024 been?
It was a big year for us in terms of our transformation. We restructured our technology in fiscal 2024 to be ready to support even greater growth in 2025 and beyond.
And how do you see the different markets in which you are currently present?
We are present globally. So I think every market is different and represents different risks and opportunities. We see that there is still a lot of growth in the recovering markets. Asia Pacific is still not at pre-pandemic levels in terms of travel. China is still recovering on some routes. And then, we are seeing more opportunities, either through growth in domestic travel on international corridors or through increased demand in domestic travel. I think that, overall, a lot of the growth will be driven by our ancillary services.
We are an ambitious company, so we always hope to outperform the market.
Where do you see particular success in terms of sales?
For us, customer acquisition has been a key focus. We see a lot of opportunities to increase our engagement with our existing customers, especially with the HBX ecosystem offering, which really helps them gain efficiencies in their systems by working with a partner that can aggregate all the different services that travelers need.
In addition to that, I think we are generally adding new clients to our portfolio, who see the benefits we can offer them in HBX.