With some 22,000 hotel rooms booked by tour companies and travel agents last year on HotelBeds and their BedsOnLine.com website, the Alabama Tourism Department has turned to this B2B travel company to help the lodging industry in the state recover from a Covid travel recession.
Starting Sept. 15, Alabama joins several Southern states and destinations in the Travel South USA Tourism Recovery Campaign. This campaign is aimed at more than 100,000 travel agents and corporate accounts that use Hotelbeds to book hotels in the U.S. and three regions of the world. Those travel advisors work for companies such as airlines, tour companies, AAA travel offices, and American Express.
This campaign targets some of the largest markets of Hotelbed users.
- 97,000+ travel agents in U.S. & Canada
- 13,000+ travel agents in UK & Ireland
- 9,700+ travel agents in Germany
The campaign is designed to increase travel to Alabama in a staged approach over an eight-month booking window covering travel from September to August of next year. It includes promotions aimed at the U.S. market, then Canada and finally the U.K. and Germany. Target starting dates in non-U.S. regions would be modified if travel restrictions are not lifted by then.
- U.S. campaign – targeting travel companies and their travel agents booking travel September through March of next year.
- Canada campaign – targeting travel companies and their agents booking travel February through June of next year.
- UK and Germany campaigns – targeting travel companies and their agents booking travel April through August of next year.
“The cities of Nashville, Tupelo, New Orleans and the states of Mississippi and Louisiana are among the destinations joining Alabama in this promotion,” said Grey Brennan, Deputy Director of Alabama Tourism. “Those agents booking travel for clients looking to make a Southern road trip have a one stop campaign that informs and allows booking of hotels in our region.”
The other destinations participating are the state of South Carolina and Raleigh, North Carolina.
This strategic campaign will appear on the BedsOnLine.com booking site and includes a landing page headlined Authentic South with inspirational travel copy and the Travel South USA logo. In addition, Alabama and the other participating states and cities will have their own landing page with additional editorial copy and a way for travel agents to immediately book hotels.
On the Alabama page of bedsonline.com, hotels in key areas with special deals will be highlighted and receive special placement, followed by a booking engine that will include all of the more than 500 hotels contracted by Hotelbeds in Alabama. In addition, a webinar training will be offered to the travel agents in the U.S. on Alabama and the other participating destinations. Travel agents in each of the targeted counties will also be able to download PDFs with Alabama information.
The special deals offered during the campaign will be available in both the Hotelbeds system and Hotelbeds’ bedsonline.com website.
Hoteliers should contact their HotelBeds representative if they wish to offer special deals or become part of the HotelBeds distribution channel. That representative is Kim Wreyford at kim@hotelbeds.com.
Last year Hotelbeds booked 22,469 room nights in Alabama, with two-thirds of the state bookings at lodgings located in Birmingham, Mobile, Huntsville, Tuscaloosa and Montgomery. These same cities are also some of the hardest hit with declines in visitation because of the Covid crisis.
Hotelbeds has contracted the following number of hotels in Alabama cities;
Alexander City – 4, Anniston-Oxford – 12, Atmore – 3, Auburn – 20, Birmingham – 128, Clanton – 3, Phenix City – 7, Cullman – 5, Daphne – 4, Decatur – 26, Demopolis – 5, Dothan – 27, Enterprise – 6, Florence/Muscle Shoals – 14, Foley – 8, Gadsden – 16, Gardendale – 2, Greenville – 6, Gulf Shores – 18, Huntsville – 50, Jackson – 3, Jasper – 7, Leeds – 4, Mobile – 52, Monroeville – 2, Montgomery – 49, Opelika – 6, Opp – 1, Ozark – 3, Prattville – 9, Rainsville/Fort Payne – 7, Russellville – 1, Saraland – 9, Scottsboro – 5, Selma – 5, Troy – 6, Tuscaloosa – 28, Winfield – 3.
Hotelbeds is a travel technology company that operates a hotel distribution platform accessed by travel agents, tour operators, airlines and loyalty programs to make hotel bookings for their customers. Hotelbeds is the world’s leading accommodation wholesaler with 180,000 hotel properties and 60,000 B2B clients with more than 200,000 travel advisors using the system.
For more information on this promotion, contact grey.brennan@tourism.alabama.gov