Hotelbeds, the world’s leading bedbank, has announced a plan that responds to the strong demand for domestic hotels from the world’s largest source markets following the aftermath of Covid-19.

As part of this drive, Hotelbeds plans to add an additional 10,000 new properties to its global portfolio of hotels by the end of the year.

Harnessing big data analytical capabilities, Hotelbeds has been able to closely compare the main corridors, lead time, and length of stay for each source market to more accurately predict the characteristics of the surge in demand for domestic stays.

As a first wave the initiative will be implemented in the USA, Canada, Mexico, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, UK, UAE, Saudi Arabia, China, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand, with more countries to be included in the near future.

This strategy has been strongly supported by many of Hotelbeds’ 60,000 B2B travel buyers worldwide – including tour operators, airlines, points redemption schemes and retail travel agencies – who have also clearly signalled the increase in demand for domestic properties following the pandemic.

In addition to adding more domestic properties in the above-mentioned markets, Hotelbeds is expanding its hotel portfolio in secondary destinations in order to cover new leisure destinations relevant for domestic travellers. It is adding more property types, for example resorts and rural hotels, increasing the availability of refundable rates to provide peace of mind for end consumers, reducing releases and minimum stay requirements in order to increase to the maximum availability and respond to the more last-minute profile of domestic travellers.

Hotelbeds is launching local marketing campaigns targeted at B2B travel buyers in the selected source markets to promote domestic products at great rates this summer season.

León Herce, Global Sales Director at Hotelbeds, said: “Following client feedback, and thanks to our own data analytics capabilities, we have detected not only the overall surge in domestic demand, but the requirement for more product in secondary destinations, across all different property types.