Booking volumes rise by 9.7% in first quarter; international business maintains its positive performance
Nuremberg, 8 April 2010* - hotel.de AG, one of the leading worldwide online hotel reservation services, can report booking volume growth of 9.7% to Euro 100.9 million in the first quarter of 2010 (Q1 2009: Euro 92.0 million). International booking volumes, which rose by 13.8% to Euro 43.1 million, contributed significantly to this development (Q1 2009: Euro 37.9 million). The marked upturn in the international business already apparent from the fourth quarter of 2009 has been driven in particular by the global economic recovery. Italy and the UK, still negative in previous quarters, have now made positive growth contributions once more, with booking volume growth of 4.2% and 12.2% respectively. Especially strong performances were seen once again in France (+26.3% on the previous year’s period) and Spain (+14.5% on the previous year’s period). Booking volumes in Germany, hotel.de’s home market, also improved substantially, rising by 6.8% from Euro 54.1 million to Euro 57.8 million. The conference business contributed booking volumes of Euro 2.1 million (Q1 2009: Euro 3.1 million).
Number of bookings grows in line with booking volumes
The number of bookings increased by 9.5% from 461,407 to 505,390, and thus grew at a similar rate to booking volumes. The international business accounted for 166,351 bookings, 13.8% more than in the first quarter of the previous year. The number of bookings in Germany increased by 7.8% to 339,039. "The economic recovery has led conditions in the business travel segment to gradually return to normal," commented Dr. Heinz Raufer, CEO of hotel.de AG. "Following the drastic fall in room prices and average length of stay per booking last year, these two key figures are slowly coming back to pre-crisis levels. Bookings by our key account customers have also picked up noticeably. Our business customers’ travel volumes are like a barometer of economic activity - one which is now clearly pointing upwards."
* The booking figures quoted here correspond to the data query status on 01.04.2010. Retrospective cancellations lead to a corresponding reduction in booking totals.
hotel.de AG
hotel.de AG, with its international brand hotel.info, operates a free hotel reservation service for companies and private customers at www.hotel.de and www.hotel.info. The company offers more than 210,000 hotels worldwide for booking online. Customers benefit in this respect from considerable cost savings. hotel.de shows all available room rates for each hotel, thus always enabling customers to select the lowest or most appropriate rate. All bookings are forward simultaneously, securely and directly to the individual hotel. This is guaranteed by the unique integration of hotels’ own reservation systems (so-called CRS and PMS systems) and hotel.de’s own myRES reservation system under hotel.de’s standard user surface. hotel.de’s corporate application is already used by well-known companies, such as BASF, SAP AG, Texas Instruments and Ernst & Young AG. Since January 2007, hotel.de has extended its portfolio to include a conference enquiries and booking system. Business customers in particular stand to save time and money due to the optimised conference organisation processes facilitated by this conference tool.
hotel.info
hotel.info - the international brand of hotel.de AG - was created to promote the company’s expansion into international markets. To acquire new customers and hotels abroad, sales offices have already been opened in the UK (London), France (Paris), Spain (Barcelona), Italy (Rome) and China (Shanghai). The company’s high share of business customers with international operations facilitates its entry into new markets. The aim is to establish hotel.info as the leading online hotel reservation service for business and private customers in the foreign markets mentioned and then step by step across the whole of Europe.
