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    Hotelbeds

    17 February 2020

    12 million members of the US credit unions can now book your properties via Hotelbeds

    Media Name: credit_union.jpg

    This week we have launched a first-of-a-kind strategic partnership with Credit Union Travel (CU Travel), the official travel partner of the credit union industry in the United States.

    CU Travel offers exclusive travel discounts to credit unions – a form of financial cooperatives popular in the United States that are owned by members and offer traditional banking services – who in turn offer a wide variety deals, including travel, to their consumer members.

    As part of the agreement our 180,000 hotel properties globally, now gain access to CU Travel’s 12 million users across the United States.

    This news follows our strategic push to work with more opaque channels – such as points redemption schemes, employee benefits programs and loyalty cards – as part of our commitment to provide hotel partners with high-value and incremental bookings that don’t compete with the hotels direct channel. 

    Many reservations from this channel come from long-haul markets that on average book further in advance, pay higher rates, cancel less, stay longer, spend more in destination, and return more often.

    Hotelbeds has over 50 closed-user group type clients, many of them in the North American market.

    Jason Soss, Global Head of Strategic Partnerships, Bedbank at Hotelbeds, speaking about the new partnership: “I just know that our hotel partners around the world will be hugely excited to hear that we will be working with CU Travel.

    “Hoteliers everywhere are always looking for new ways to access incremental, high-value bookings from channels that they couldn´t access easily themselves. What better way to do that than through accessing the 12 million credit union members across the United States?

    “We’ve been working hard over the last few years to offer our hotel partners access to more and more opaque channels, such as CU Travel, and I´m pleased to confirm that we now have over 50 such partners, including loyalty cards, points redemption programs, and employee benefit schemes.”

    Whilst Mike Neill, CU Travel Board Member and founder of ServiStar Consulting added: “Credit Unions are known for providing tremendous value to their loyal members through great products, as well as personalized customer service. Our strategy is to help credit unions expand their reach by offering a great product – over 180,000 hotel properties worldwide, many sourced under exclusive terms at the best prices – for their members whilst generating both interest and non-interest income. It’s the ultimate win-win!”