Hotelclub is now back on track after a “challenging” year, Orbitz chief executive and director Barney Harford has revealed.
The Sydney-based accommodation booking site is Orbitz’s most popular product in Asia Pacific. But Harford admitted the brand endured a difficult 2011.
“It hasn’t performed as well as we’d like it to,” he told Travel Today.
The migration of the site to a new $145 million global booking platform at the start of the fourth quarter was particularly problematic, despite success in migrating other parts of the business.
“For Hotelclub, the broader number of languages, Asian character issues and the fact it’s a hotel only business just meant we had a few more things we needed to work through,” Harford said.
But he was confident that a number of changes including the promotion of Tamer Tamar to the role of senior vice president international, who will be responsible for the brand, and the completed migration to the new platform will put it back on course.
In addition, he claimed the Hotelclub mobile site launched last month had been well-received, with mobile now accounting for 12% of overall hotel searches across the business.
He urged hoteliers to participate in its mobile-only deals to fill beds, highlighting 65% of bookings made on mobile devices were for same day reservations, compared with 15% via the desktop site.
Meanwhile, he anticipated 2012 growth for Orbitz would be “between high single figures and low double digit figures”.
