Group-buying sites such as Groupon offer prepaid vouchers and now Amadeus is building up its hotel offerings with prepaid vouchers, as well.
Amadeus, the global distribution system and technology company, is not getting into flash sales, but travel agents connected to the system can now offer clients vouchers for prepaid hotels as the result of a new Amadeus partnership with wholesaler Destinations of the World.
An Amadeus spokeswoman notes that the company has been offering prepaid vouchers before flash sales emerged on the scene.
"Amadeus began offering a pre-payment option before Groupon, so our agreement with Destinations of the World is not related to the Groupon trend," says a spokeswoman for Amadeus. We have already been offering this kind of content from other providers -- for example, Transhotel, through our solution Amadeus Hotel Store."
With the partnership with the hotel aggregator, Amadeus says it now offers travel agents more than 100,000 hotel properties worldwide.
Travel agents accessing hotels from Destinations of the World can mark-up net rates and deliver clients prepaid vouchers branded with the agency's logo.
Amadeus says the integration of Destinations of the World content into the Amadeus Selling Platform desktop "gives travel agents greater breadth and depth of choice to drive revenues, improve cash flow efficiency and enhance servicing."
With passenger name record integration, travel agents can process Destinations of the World hotel itineraries within the GDS, Amadeus says.
Reaching the 100,000 hotels' mark for Amadeus comes as the GDS-GDS and GDS-online travel agency hotel battle appears to be heating up.
Travelport is gearing up to unveil a new travel agent hotel booking system, Rooms and More, and claims it will offer 200,000 hotels as it rolls out in the third quarter of 2011.
That 200,000 hotels available globally from Travelport is a pretty big number -- it's double what rival GDS Amadeus is claiming.
Meanwhile, online travel agencies are making inroads in their direct-to-consumer hotel offerings.
Priceline, through its Booking.com and Agoda units, now offers 100,000 properties on a retail basis -- as opposed to the merchant model -- in Europe alone, according to an estimate from Susquehanna International Group.
That makes Priceline a dominant player in Europe, and an impediment to other players seeking to enter the market.
In contrast, the next closest online travel agency rival, Expedia, including its Venere subsidiary, only offers some 34,000 hotels in Europe on a retail basis, Susquehanna International Group estimates.
Says Herman Leung, a Susquehanna financial analyst: "The fragmented nature of the hotel industry in Europe makes it more difficult for competitors to sign up few large suppliers and gain access to inventory."