UK-based JacTravel’s wholesale accommodation website for agents, www.totalstay.com, is broadening its focus across Asian markets, having ventured into the region last year.
Ben Wood, regional head of sales – Asia-Pacific, JacTravel, said: “We see Asia as a big market of growth, which is why this region is a key focus for JacTravel. We are growing the brand across Asia-Pacific and continue to recruit staff and build our regional sales, contracting and operation teams in Asia Pacific.
“It helps that through word-of-mouth marketing – a powerful tool in this region – we also have agents now in Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand and Singapore using our hotel booking platform,” he added, acknowledging the “extremely competitive market space with an ever-increasing number of suppliers” in the travel distribution landscape.
Paul Hastings-Gayle, sales director, JacTravel, added: “We found that our growth and success has been achieved by localising our offerings, both in terms of hotel product and regional personnel. We have been able to grow sales by offering competitive prices and strong availability in key regional destinations, such as Japan, Hong Kong and Thailand.”
While a relatively new entrant to the Asian market, Totalstay has been established in Europe since 2003 and now has an inventory of over 165,000 hotels across 10,000 destinations worldwide.
In Asia, the service and support centre, alongside the sales, accounts development and contracting teams, are based in Hong Kong. There are also sales teams on the ground in Thailand and Malaysia.
