DidaTravel has announced a partnership expansion with Centara Hotels & Resorts (Centara), offering special rates to the former’s B2B buyers for 48 of Centara’s global properties.
DidaTravel’s B2B buyers around the world will continue to gain access to real-time inventory from all of Centara’s brands – 39 properties in Thailand and the other nine in Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, the Maldives, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam.
The agreement includes closer cooperation on marketing campaigns to help Centara reach more offline travel sellers in China. Not only will Centara benefit from DidaTravel’s business intelligence (BI) reports on ideal sales channels and accurate pricing suggestions, the hotel chain will also significantly expand its global B2B reach by accessing 23,000 B2B buyers, including travel agencies, tour operators, airlines and TMCs.
Rikin Wu, DidaTravel founder & CEO, shared: “Through these special discount rates we will now be able to deliver Centara Hotels & Resorts even more incremental bookings from the international travellers that are now starting to venture abroad again. A big part of the value we add at DidaTravel though also comes in the form of data and insights based on our BI services and we’re really excited that Centara Hotels & Resorts will be using these too.”
Tabatha Ramsay, executive vice president – corporate commercial of Centara Hotels & Resorts, said the company’s partnership with DidaTravel since 2019 has been beneficial.
“(We) recognise its significant ability to put heads on beds in Thailand (and other destinations) that might not otherwise have come,” Ramsay added.
This deal forms part of DidaTravel’s recently announced plan to increase the number of directly contracted hotels by the end of 2022 to reach 74,000, with over 30 hotel chains already in pipeline.
He then joined the Sheraton Jeddah Hotel in Saudi Arabia as director of F&B in 2012 and subsequently moved to the flagship properties at Sheraton Grand Sydney Hyde Park in Australia and W Bangkok in Thailand.
Hong Kong’s authorities will heed science and temporarily lift the city’s flight suspension mechanism from today, choosing to rely on an extra PCR test for arriving travellers to deter the import of Covid-19 infections.
According to a statement from the government, the move is supported by initial statistics and scientific analysis that showed it is more effective to deter Covid-19 transmission through more frequent nucleic acid testing on arriving passengers than flight bans.
Travellers arriving into Hong Kong from July 8 will have to undergo a PCR test on the third day of their quarantine.
The move also takes into consideration the surge in arrivals as students return home for their summer holidays.
Hong Kong’s flight suspension mechanism has been an unpopular one, as it puts both travellers and airlines in a difficult position. The mechanism punishes an airline with a five-day flight route ban when at least five passengers – or five per cent of travellers, whichever is higher – are tested positive for Covid-19 upon arrival in Hong Kong.
Miramar Travel’s general manager, Alex Lee welcomed the move. He said: “This mechanism not only affected incoming traffic but also appetite of outbound travel as clients are worried about cost and time from having to rebook tickets and secure quarantine hotels if they failed to fly back as scheduled. Therefore, scrapping this mechanism may spur the resumption of flight services and frequency. This is turn will make airfares more affordable.”
Wing Wong, managing director of W Travel, predicts a ramp up in flight capacity following the suspension of the flight ban.
“I expect the first wave of arrivals to comprise students returning from overseas and domestic helpers in next eight weeks, followed by businessmen, travellers here to visit relatives, and holidaymakers. My key concern now is for our supply of quarantine hotels to meet demand,” he added.