22 January 2009
Belgian-based technology specialist Gateway’s (www.gateway.be) new hotel booking engine, being launched to the UK’s off and online travel agency market at the 2009 Travel Technology Show, will provide fast and easy-to-use look-and-book capabilities, an initial global inventory of over 100,000 hotels, and the ability for agents to set their own mark up.

The Gateway hotel engine, available either as an individual agent module for B2B applications or as a B2C version that can be integrated as a standard or customised facility on an agent’s website, features a best net price option. This lets agents add their own mark up and create their own cancellation rules, in addition to those of the hotel in question.

100,000+ properties
With its seamless single interface accessing well-designed pages, fast geographic searches, easy-to-complete booking fields, and links to ancillary information, the Gateway hotel engine database has over 100,000 hotel properties worldwide, ranging from budget to six star.

Unlike most other hotel booking engines, Gateway’s inventory is provided both by the major accommodation vendors such as Tourico, Hotelbeds, Jacobs and GTA, as well as by country specialists such as ETours (India) and Personal Brasil, regional specialists like Asian Trails, and luxury specialists such as Bonhotel.

Its ‘smart search’ facility enables searches around user-defined interest points in some 600 cities; you can search for a specific class of hotel, or all classes, near the Eiffel Tower, for example, and all qualifying hotels are shown on a Google map. Each listed hotel is supported by a city map with zoom function, property photo and overview information, with deeper information about the hotel, the area and the city available at the click of a mouse. Once the booking is completed, the engine can print or email a branded booking voucher.

Enhanced inventory
Andries Oprel, Gateway sales and marketing manager, explained: “We believe this latest offering from Gateway offers several advantages over other booking engines.

“One main benefit is our enhanced inventory offering a massive selection of both standard and specialist properties. Another benefit is how easily we can customise content individually to agents’ needs, adding particular properties of their own choice. And we can also customise the look and feel of B2C web pages and processes to suit an agent’s preferences.”

Oprel says the Gateway engine is already being used by around 800 travel agencies across Western Europe. “Most of these are B2B applications,” he said, “but we are getting more and more B2C users such as Cheaptickets in Germany and the Netherlands, and Connections, the biggest travel retailer in Belgium.”

Gateway is best known for its technology and services for maintaining and managing airfare databases for agents, consolidators, tour operators and airlines.

See Gateway on Stand B43 at the Travel Technology Show (Earls’ Court Two, 10-11 February 2009) or contact Andries Oprel on +32 11 45 82 82 / email a.oprel@gateway.be