Availpro Expands Adding Horsepower for Hotels

Availpro, France’s leading provider of online hotel booking and sales solutions, is expanding their offerings into Spain. For independent hotel owners, hotel chains, and individuals residences, Availpro software solutions allows for selling bookings via the proprietary Smart Channel Manager system.

Agailpro’s CEO, Sebastian Boher, told the press; “..we definitely see Spain as one of the key market to serve. We want Spanish hotel owners to be able to benefit from the expertise we have gained over the years, mainly in Paris, where 60% of the hotels use our Booking Engine.” It may also interest the reader to know that Ray Mason, former Managing Director at Travel.co.uk Ltd, is UK & Ireland Director at Availpro, whilst other industry experts from Orbitz to Bookings dot com, along with computer software geeks extraordinary, are filling in the other ranks of the company.

The launch of this innovative service by Availpro is being spearheaded by Patrick Phelps, former exec for Keytel Hotel Representatives. Obvisously, developing the same strong client bas Availpro enjoys elsewhere will be his primary hurdle. According to the release, he will be engaging hotel revenue consultants, PMS providers, and web agencies in the upcoming weeks.

Support for this launch will come from Agailpro’s dot com, and the company’s already established network. Avialpro will also exhibit during the Fitur (Feria de Madrid) – visit the English language site –  from 19 January until the 23rd of the month. The graphic below shows an Availpro distribution for a particular hotel.

Availpro is touting their booking engine as an easy to use alternative to less cutting edge examples too. This press includes an acknowledgement by one hotelier, Simon Denley of the Armstrong Hotel:

” Thanks to the exceptional conversion rate of lookers to bookers, the Availpro booking engine delivers almost 50% of our total online bookings.”

Sitting in between the big booking players, Availpro’s engine has so far been able to gather fairly massive support from both providers and the client side of the European bookings market. Availpro is a kind of ITA for hotels, with added support for its clients, as illustrated a bit below.

With the current atmosphere of change taking place in the online marketplace, Availpro’s value to service providers is a model others should look at. Aside making hotels available on third party sites, this travel player seems to understand how bookings in Europe operate. Thoroughly half the online transactions take place on provider sites, and Availpro helps hotels on their own sites too.

The only “con” I see with regard to Availpro is how interestingly, the credential provided by Armstrong Hotel’s representative up there is misleading though. The hotel does not appear to have their own site, and it is a two star affair in any event. Not being able to see behind the doors of an engine is always a disadvantage too, so the folks there could offer more by way of transparency.

Aside these minor negatives, it appears this service is becoming a model for future European hotel booking tools. Looking at what amounts to their premium distribution channel management solution, Smart Channel Manager (PDF), the “buy in” cost of about 2 GBP per booking seems a bargain for veritable “two way” control of a hotel’s online revenue machinery. And Avialpro’s news goes forward as I report this, at the upcoming Birmingham Hostec (PDF) trade fair, the company will exhibit its differentiation further.

If you are wondering whether or not Availpro is one of those corporate entities that simply “claims” two was connectivity, their Twitter account is alive and well, but just – 27 followers does not a massive conversation make. Aside this small hiccup (or large depending on how you gauge it), and no apparent Facebook speak, the ability of this company to garner hotels under their wings cannot be overlooked. We will be contacting their CEO for an interview and possibly a closer look under their hood. Until then, Availpro is another of France’s travel tech companies on the move.