Omnirooms and TravelgateX have formed an international strategic alliance for hotels to distribute their accessible rooms
Both tech companies have partnered with the aim to become a global reference in the accessible hotel product distribution.
According to a recent study conducted by the European Union ‘’Economic impact and Travel Patterns of Accessible Tourism in Europe’’, the accessible tourism market represents around 27% of the total population and 12% of the tourism market. Once Foundation stated, those numbers are extremely relevant as according to the latest surveys, 72% of people with disabilities travel at least twice a year.
In Spain, as in all developed countries, hotel establishments have dedicated rooms and spaces adapted for tourists who need it. However, when doing an online search, these are not always easy to find and not every hotel owner agrees to publish them.
Thereby, omnirooms.com, has been working on offering people with reduced mobility the possibility of booking online adapted rooms in different accommodations. Partnering with TravelgateX, the largest B2B marketplace for online tourism connections, will enable Omnirooms to raise awareness and help hotels as well as tour operators to categorize and distribute efficiently and profitably their accessible rooms online.
“We are very pleased and excited about this agreement with TravelgateX. Thanks to this new partnership we will make it even easier for hotels to offers their adapted rooms online. Little by little and with the support of biggest players in the industry such as TravelgateX, we are confident that this approach will take us a step closer to our Theory of Change, the goal of which is to end the discrimination suffered by people with reduced mobility when booking their holidays, “explains Pedro Hernández, Omnirooms’ CEO. He adds that this strategic alliance will be applied and tested in German and Nordic hotels.
For his part, José Díaz, TravelgateX’s CCO, says that “this new partnership is just another step towards fulfilling our commitment to providing a more efficient social assistance and corporate responsibility to the industry. We believe that it’s important to help hotels commercialize these adapted rooms quicker, transparently and with all the important information tourists need.” The synergy of these two Spanish companies will allow the accessible rooms available in hundreds of hotels to be marketed among the major tour operators, travel agencies and hotel companies.
Current Legislation
Current Spanish legislation requires hotels to have a specific number of rooms adapted for people with reduced mobility, which varies according to each Autonomous Community. Despite complying with this regulation, most of hotels do not support online booking on accessible rooms, but a few industry leaders are beginning to bet on CSR and accessible tourism, providing accessible rooms to the portfolio offered by Omnirooms.com
Omnirooms.com is working on solving this issue by allowing these rooms to be reserved in the same way as any other. In fact, they already collaborate with more than 50 hotel chains, which offer this possibility in over 250 hotels.
After the agreement with TravelgateX, the hotels will be able to code their accessible rooms and the marketplace will make them available to suppliers and customers quickly and easily.
According to Omnirooms, there are 37 million people between 16–64 years old with reduced mobility making over 170 million in reservations and spending around 395.000 million euros in hotel stays all over Europe.
Company’s description
To date, Omnirooms has more than 250 accessible hotels in more than 20 destinations around the world. Their main goal is to facilitate the booking process to more than 120M tourists with disabilities and reduced mobility in Europe. The potential revenues of this segment could be between 88–126M euros per year, one of the reasons why these rooms have become a major focus for the travel industry.
A travel technology connectivity platform operating since 2012, TravelgateX is located in ParcBIT Palma de Mallorca. With a single integration, it provides access to the largest network of buyers and suppliers in the travel industry.