The integration will enable the more than 2,500 hotels who use the Busy Rooms central reservations cloud platform to sell directly through Thomas Cook. The hotels will benefit from the new online holiday company’s reach and growing customer base in the UK.
The Busy Rooms channel manager is one of the first that Thomas Cook has implemented as part of the new business’ move to sell more directly contracted hotels as it scales the business. Busy Rooms has existing direct relationships with Club Med, Casa Cook and Cook’s Club hotels which are all sister companies within the Fosun Tourism Group. The addition of the Busy Rooms integration enables the business to stretch beyond those initial hotels.
Thomas Cook, which relaunched as an online business in September 2020, operates on a trust model basis meaning all money paid by customers are held outside the business and only drawn down once the customer returns from their holiday.
Kelly Wooffitt, head of direct contracting at Thomas Cook, said: “After only a year of trading we are already one of the top 15 Atol licence holders in the UK, with plans to grow beyond that if consumer demand returns. We want to build close relationships with our customers’ favourite hotels and integrating Busy Rooms is part of that plan. We recognise that many hoteliers suffered financial damage following the collapse of the old business and so our new trust model means that their money is protected no matter what happens.”
Casey Davey, VP Americas, head of marketing at Busy Rooms, said: “We were a long-standing partner of the former business and so rebuilding the relationship with the new Thomas Cook is an important step in enabling our hotel partners access to a household brand in the industry. We will be working with our hotels to support direct relationship building with the new company and look forward to a long and fruitful partnership.”
Thomas Cook is a new online holiday company launched in September 2020 following Fosun Tourism Group’s acquisition of the Thomas Cook brand and associated digital assets in November 2019.
The new business offers tens of thousands of hotels and flying from all major UK airports as well as a money-back guarantee on any cancelled holidays and free amendments for covid-related reasons.
Tags: Busy Rooms, Thomas Cook, Fosun Tourism Group
