UK Enterprise Awards 2018

SME NEWS / UK Enterprise Awards 2018 123 , Company: Travellanda Ltd Contact: Bruno Laranjeiro - Director Address: Landmark House, 4th Floor North, Hammersmith Bridge Road, London, W6 9EJ, UK Phone: 020 3384 5410 Website: www.Travellanda.com Best Online Wholesale Company 2018 TRAVELLANDA UKE18090 Travellanda is among one of the fastest growing global hotel online wholesalers, supplying rooms to a wide range of clients around the world. We invited one of the firm’s Directors, Bruno Laranjeiro to share an insight into the firm and how it has achieved this phenomenal success. centric hotel online wholesaler. Over the past eight years we have taken a number of steps to achieve this, focusing on two main areas: technology and customer service. “Technology has been at the centre of our interest from the beginning. We have a great IT team who work with our all our managers from each department to ensure the development to be made in our system will not only help our clients and suppliers but for our staff too. The feedback from our client’s plays a major role, listening to them gives us most of the answers on how to create a unique system that is easy to use and meets their needs. “With regards to customer service, we focus on meeting our customers’ needs, as well as working closely with and listening to our partners. We have dedicated Account Managers for each client and our own customer service team handling all queries available 24/7. We understand that a small local travel agency does not have the same need as a very large OTA selling on Meta-search, and so we tailor our solutions to meet their requirements. On top of that, as we are a global company, we have learnt that there are lots of cultural differences and realities of each of the markets we work with. The most important step to achieve our mission is to listen more and talk less. Listening has been one of the best formula to reaching our goals.” It is this client focus that sets the firm apart from its competitors, as Bruno is keen to highlight. “One differentiation Travellanda has from other wholesalers is that 50% of our business is made with travel agencies and tour operators logging into our system to book hotels and 50% is sales via XML to large OTA’s and B2B systems. It seems that many other major wholesalers are very focussed on serving OTA’s and B2B via XML, when we are still wanting to grow our password protected online booking website, as we feel this is more important to our clients.” Looking to the future, Bruno has big plans for Travellanda as he and his team seek to expand their global reach and better serve their international clientele, as Bruno explains in his concluding comments. “Moving forward, the future looks bright for Travellanda as we seek to build upon our current success and grow even further. We want to invest in the Middle East and Americas in the next three years, having staff based there, specifically in Dubai and even open an office in America. We are planning and comparing several possibilities such as Canada, USA or Colombia but it takes time and caution to make the right decisions. To achieve success, the key is to undertake market research in these regions. “Another one of our big projects this year is to work directly with one large chain hotel and to develop our Extranet. We are developing our own extranet to connect directly with many local DMC’s and specific hotels to improve our portfolio. We will remain an aggregator as we strongly believe in the power of the aggregators and we are proud to be one of the top worldwide aggregator, but we believe a small portion of direct contracts will benefit our clients, which is our ongoing focus.” Drawing on its vast industry expertise and knowledge, Travellanda provides hotel rooms to OTA’s and other B2B systems via an XML. Additionally, the firm also has a network of over 1,000 travel agents and tour operators using its password protected online booking system. Bruno discusses how the firm’s mission since the beginning has been focused on supporting clients and providing them with innovative, bespoke solutions tailored around their individual needs. “At Travellanda, our mission is to make the life of our partners easier and our vision is to become the most customer