According to recent data from Hotelbeds, 28% of its European hotel reservations from non-European, long-haul source markets, up from around 25% in 2018. The growth in international tourists arriving to Europe is mainly attributed to a 40% year-on-year increase in reservations for Chinese tourists via Hotelbeds, with China now ranking as Hotelbeds’ sixth biggest source market to Europe.

 

Carlos Muñoz, Hotelbeds Managing Director, said, “The boom in Chinese visitors is increasing the percentage of non-European bookings even higher... We’ve worked hard over the last few years to raise awareness with our European hotelier partners on how to best attract Chinese travelers to their hotel, advising them on points such as not just language, but strategies such as social media, payments and even Chinese travelers’ tastes.”

 

Currently, a total of 180,000 unique hotels globally are available on the Hotelbeds system and a majority of the hotels are directly contracted under exclusive terms and conditions. This growth has been driven by the renewed focus of Hotelbeds in providing its hotel partners with incremental bookings via its network of 60,000 travel buyers from both non-domestic source markets and B2B buyers – including tour operators, retail travel agents, airline websites and loyalty and reward points schemes.