RateHawk.com, an online booking tool for travel professionals reported its commercial results for the fourth quarter ended December 31, 2019, and provided its 2020 outlook.
The total gross booking value in Greece increased 64% compared to Q3 2019. The total number of bookings made by Greek partners increased 77% compared to the third quarter. By the end of 2019 more than 550 Greek travel professionals had been using the platform. The total number of RateHawk’s partners amounts to 15,000 travel professionals from over 100 countries.
The top domestic destinations in terms of bookings made by Greek travel professionals in Q4 2019 were Athens, Thessaloniki, and Santorini. The leading choices for outbound trips in Q4 2019 were Germany (Munich, Berlin, Frankfurt), Italy (Rome, Milan), the UK (London), France (Paris), Spain (Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia), the USA (New York), Belgium (Brussels), Austria (Vienna), the UAE (Dubai).
The preferred accommodation categories booked by Greek travel professionals in Q4 were 4-star hotels (48% of total Q4 bookings) and 5-star hotels (25%) followed by 3-star hotels (20%).
Felix Shpilman, CEO of Emerging Travel Group, commented: “We recorded a strong fourth quarter in Greece driven by the competitive strengths of our product and the outstanding efforts made by our local Greek team. For 2020, we expect to continue delivering solid long-term growth while staying focused on technology improvements, acquiring new partners, activating the existing ones and implementing important API integrations.”
RateHawk officially launched in Greece in 2018. The service sources its inventory – more than 1,3 million hotels, apartments, and hostels – from over 100 suppliers worldwide and 30,000 direct hotel contracts.
In 2019 RateHawk was localized into Greek, Serbian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Turkish and Romanian languages. The platform went through a redesign which made it adaptive for mobile devices and tablets. Major updates were made to the room section at the hotel page, making it more functional and easier for travel professionals to compare the rates and work with them.
“We receive a lot of positive feedback from our partners who recognize the benefits that RateHawk brings to them. Our outstanding operations, pre-check service, intuitive interface, and interactive map are just a few of these. We will continue investing our resources into product and customer service in Greece,” says Felix Shpilman.
RateHawk is owned by Emerging Travel Group, an international online travel group that operates in over 100 source markets with the brands RateHawk, ZenHotels, and Ostrovok.
