As the world's largest travel company, Expedia has acquired a hotel database of over 80,000 properties and 4 million rooms world-wide. With this comprehensive coverage, it’s no surprise that GDS companies have woken up to the benefits of integrating with the Expedia Affiliate Network (EAN).
What is EAN?
EAN is a division of the Expedia Inc. group focused solely on the B2B market - serving over 7,500 partners in 33 countries. EAN currently boasts an inventory of over 200,000 hotels, which is expected to grow thanks to Expedia's recent acquisitions. EAN pride themselves on being highly customisable, allowing their partners to access their network, usually via an API, without having to worry about the technology behind the booking process.
Sabre Plug Into Expedia Affiliate Network
GDS companies, such as Sabre, have recently introduced a plug-in to their GDS allowing TMCs to access and book through EAN, whilst retaining their commission. Sabre’s integration with EAN has unlocked 63,000 new hotels for TMC and business travellers to choose from. The hotels in EAN include budget hotels, small boutiques, airport accommodation and serviced apartments. After registration, the Expedia plug-in will work within Sabre's GDS, to add EAN hotels into Sabre's existing network. For hotels in EAN, this gives them one more place where they can sell personalised merchandising to business travellers. For Expedia, this partnership expands their customer base and gets more business travellers booking through their systems.
Use Our Expedia Integrator on Your Current GDS
It’s great to see larger GDS companies discovering the benefits of EAN, but they aren't the only ones. We already have a pretty nifty EAN plug-in ourselves, Expedia Integrator. Released in 2014, our popular application unlocks the full EAN content with over 160,000 hotels of all shapes and sizes. With the Expedia Integrator you can still work within your GDS of choice, and have access to a much wider choice of properties and rates, whilst bringing the costs right down.
The Expedia Integrator allows users to search by city, airport, postcode or landmark, before presenting the results on a interactive map for you to browse. Alternatively, if you have an existing booking in your GDS, it can extract the check-in times and the destination to reccommend local hotels. The Expedia integrator also enables you to access public rates, preferential package deals and hotel collect through one tool. And you won’t have to chase down hotels for the commission either, as EAN guarantees commission with every booking.
The Expedia Integrator is only the first step in enhancing your GDS system. Check out our full range of GDS add-ons to see how you can maximise your offering.
