HRS and GetThere agree to strategic distribution collaboration

COLOGNE, Germany, April 4, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- HRS, the worldwide leading hotel portal for corporate customers, has entered into a distribution agreement with GetThere, a global technology company serving corporations and is a brand of Sabre.

The 250,000 hotels affiliated to HRS will be available by the end of April to GetThere's global corporate customers no matter what global distribution system they use. HRS offers detailed and high quality hotel information in 32 languages as well as flexible and customer friendly booking conditions.

"Working with GetThere complements our systematic multi-channel strategy and will mean all GetThere corporate customers can benefit from our wide hotel portfolio instantly. From the hotel's perspective, the connection to GetThere, will allow yet another global distribution channel with extended coverage particularly in the huge US market, where Sabre is the undisputed market leader in the managed corporate segment. A win-win situation for all parties," says HRS Chief Executive Officer Tobias Ragge.

HRS and GetThere believe hoteliers will benefit as their properties will now have even greater exposure via GetThere's thousands of corporate customers, including a majority of the Fortune 200, in 95 countries. Each month 5 million unique users visit the corporate travel reservation system to search and book a business trip. In 2012 GetThere managed more than $9.5 billion in business travel spend.

"HRS has such a vast and unique range of hotels that we know will be of great value to our customers," says Suzanne Neufang, President of GetThere. "We look forward to working with HRS to bring the best selection of hotels to corporations worldwide."

HRS – The hotel portal
HRS operates a worldwide portal for private and business travellers with more than 250,000 hotels in all categories across 180 countries and an average of twelve million visits per month. The company has a large selection of hotels across the globe with tens of thousands of individual hotels and hundreds of hotel chains. The free reservation service offers online hotel bookings and a price guarantee with money back promise. Standard bookings can be cancelled free of charge until 6 pm on the day of arrival. The process of selecting a hotel is simplified thanks to detailed hotel descriptions, informative hotel videos and approximately three million guest evaluations. In addition to millions of individual customers, more than 35,000 companies book their rooms for business travel, conferences and group travel regularly through HRS and benefit from special HRS corporate discounts with savings of up to 30 per cent compared to the current daily rates. As a leader in innovation, the company is also setting new standards in the industry in the area of mobile bookings. HRS provides applications for all major smartphones and tablet PCs, enabling customers to book the right hotel room even when on the go. The company was founded in 1972 and is based in Cologne, with offices in London, Paris, Rome, Istanbul, Warsaw, Moscow, Shanghai and Singapore. HRS is the sole owner of the Alpine portal www.tiscover.com with headquarters in Innsbruck, and the majority shareholder of hotel.de AG with headquarters in Nuremberg.

GetThere  
GetThere®, a Sabre Travel Network® brand, provides technology to corporations. Its innovative online and mobile booking tools are available in 15 languages and used by thousands of companies in more than 95 countries including a majority of Fortune 200 corporations. Every year, millions of business travelers use GetThere to book and manage their business trips and meetings. The world's largest online corporate travel provider, GetThere processes more than $9.5 billion in annual business travel spend.

GetThere and Sabre Travel Network are part of Sabre Holdings®, a global technology company serving the world's largest industry- travel and tourism.  For more information please visit: www.getthere.com.

Contacts for Media:

HRS – HOTEL RESERVATION SERVICE
Anja Klein
Head of Communications
Phone: +49 (0)221 - 2077 - 5058
E-mail: [email protected]

GETTHERE
Nancy St. Pierre
Head of Content
Phone: +1 682-605-3864
E-mail: [email protected]

SOURCE HRS