Tourism Exchange celebrates first year

Tourism Exchange celebrates first year with 900 operators

12 May 2010 New Zealand’s online tourism marketplace, the Tourism Exchange, has just celebrated its first anniversary, and a year characterised by steady growth, more than 900 operators, and rapid adoption from across the industry.

CEO Chris Hunter says the substantial growth of the business is testament to the valuable role it is now playing for both operators and distributors of tourism products in New Zealand.

“Twelve months ago we launched the Tourism Exchange with a vision to create a central marketplace where New Zealand based tourism operators could connect with national and global distributors. This vision is being realised through our substantial growth, and many notable partnerships - including those with several key reservation systems,” says Mr Hunter.

Recent integrations with online booking systems ResBook (by Availability), Seekom, MyFidelio.Net and RoomMaster have substantially increased the opportunity for operators to participate in the Tourism Exchange.

“These integrations round out our marketplace. We now provide the opportunity for hundreds of tourism operators to come on board via our integrations with these popular systems.”

“We can also enable operators with no booking management system to participate, by using our Evivo Frontdesk online diary and booking engine, which has been adopted by over 500 operators in the past year,” says Mr Hunter.

For suppliers or providers of tourism services or products, the Tourism Exchange is establishing a reputation for providing access to unique distributors, and the opportunity to be exposed to high profile distributors such as Air New Zealand Holidays, Grab A Seat, RoomsDirect.co.nz and Air New Zealand Online.

“Participation of high profile distributors has been essential to our growth. Air New Zealand’s distribution channels have worked actively with Tourism Exchange to secure boutique and mainstream product for the changing needs of their travellers,” says Mr Hunter.

Tourism Exchange’s services have been enhanced further this year with the launch of out of the box, online solutions and free business tools for distributors. This enables online travel agents and listing sites to commercialise their websites quickly and cost effectively.

“Our ability to provide these value-add tools at no cost to distribution partners has attracted much interest amongst both existing and new third party distributors.”

Looking to the next year, Mr Hunter says the focus remains on continual growth and placing greater emphasis on the large and mid-sized operators that can now connect to Tourism Exchange via the various reservation system integrations.

“Increasing online exposure to new customers and attracting new bookings is at the heart of every tourism business and in our first year we’ve already made that possible for hundreds of New Zealand tourism operators. We look forward to helping hundreds more achieve this in the next 12 months.”

www.tourismexchange.co.nz

ENDS

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