PALMA, Spain, 21 February 2020: Hotelbeds, a leading bedbank, confirmed Wednesday the first-of-a-kind partnership with Credit Union Travel, the official travel partner of the credit union industry in the US.
CU Travel offers travel discounts to credit unions – a form of financial cooperatives popular in the US that are owned by members and offer traditional banking services – who in turn offer the deals to their consumer members.
As part of the agreement, the 180,000 hotel properties available from Hotelbeds globally now gain access to CU Travel’s 12 million users across the United States.
This news follows a push from Hotelbeds to work with more closed-user groups – such as points redemption schemes, employee benefits programs and loyalty cards – as part of the company’s commitment to providing hotel partners with high-value and incremental bookings.
Many reservations from this channel come from long-haul markets and on average book further in advance, pay higher rates, cancel less, stay longer, spend more in destination, and return more often.
Already the company can confirm over 50 existing closed-user group clients, many of them in the North American market.
Hotelbeds global head of strategic partnerships Jason Soss said: “Hoteliers are always looking for new ways to access incremental, high-value bookings from channels that they couldn’t access themselves easily. What better way to do that than through accessing the 120 million members of credit unions across the United States?
“We’ve been working hard over the last few years to offer our hotel partners access to more and more closed-user groups, such as CU Travel, and I’m pleased to confirm that we now have over 50 such partners, including loyalty cards, points redemption programs, and employee benefit schemes.”
