Lowcost embarks on international diversification with Hoteling.com offshoot

Lowcost embarks on international diversification with Hoteling.com offshoot

A hotel-only offshoot is being introduced across 30 countries by the Lowcost Travel Group. Hoteling.com features 300,000 properties around the world and is available in 13 different languages.

A hotel-only offshoot is being introduced across 30 countries by the Lowcost Travel Group.

Hoteling.com features 300,000 properties around the world and is available in 13 different languages.

Hoteling began trading in October with sales in the first month claimed to be above expectations, with the US, Australia, France, Argentina and Singapore being the strongest markets and 97% of sales coming from outside the UK.

The initiative continues a group strategy to re-engineer the business, change its model, diversify away from its UK beach origins and reduce dependencies on traditional marketing channels, seasonal markets and low margin flights.

Chief executive, Paul Evans, said: “We are really excited about this new channel and early signs appear extremely positive.

“We believe global mobile is the key growth area with customers showing an ever greater willingness to self-build holidays in emerging markets.

“The team has done an incredible job delivering such a simple, scalable multi-language and multi-currency website, crucially with individually differentiated translated content.

“We think it will complement our existing businesses perfectly and opens a new chapter and channel for the group.”

Hoteling managing director, Duncan Morgan, said: “The site has been built in-house with a brief to create a fuss free experience.

“The hotels range from 5 star luxury city hotels to 3 star leisure beach resorts from Australia to Malaysia, the US to Argentina, the UK to South Africa, Russia to Canada and from Germany to Scandinavia.

“The site is already live in 30 major countries offering attractively priced hotels in local currencies with more to come. We now have the ability to roll out new countries, currencies and language capability in a fast, efficient and low-cost method.

“We have built a mobile friendly hotel site independent of traditional channels, with exclusive content technology and an easy user experience for anyone wanting almost any hotel around the world, together with maps, customer reviews and other useful features in just a few clicks.”