Click the orange dots below to learn more about our journey through the years.
The DirectWithHotels vision of helping hotels get more direct bookings online is established.
DirectWithHotels sets up its Corporate Headquarters in the United Kingdom and its operational base in Makati, the financial capital of the Philippines and the business process outsourcing hub of the world.
Version 1 of our booking engine is launched, giving guests the ability to view 14 days of room availability and rates, making
online reservation easier and more efficient.
DirectWithHotels makes booking direct through hotel websites simpler and more profitable
DirectWithHotels secure a merchant account with WorldPay, a Royal Bank of Scotland company and the world’s leading payment gateway. This enables the IBE to guarantee reservations made on the hotel’s website with a 10% deposit charged to the guest’s credit card at the time of booking.
Additionally, DirectWithHotels assists hotels in the collection of late cancellation and no-show fees, an administrative headache for many of the world’s hotels.
Based on data & statistical analysis, Version 2 of the booking engine is launched to improve conversion of visitors into instantly confirmed bookings.
DirectWithHotels expands its service features, while keeping the same performance-based fee we’ve had from the very beginning.
DirectWithHotels extends its search engine marketing services to all hotel partners, focusing on Google and Yahoo. Initiatives include the management of paid campaigns at no additional cost to the hotel partners.
Version 3 of the booking engine goes to market, improving the all-important conversion ratio of visitors to bookers.
DirectWithHotels stays committed to serve every Hotel Partner, wherever they are and whatever type of accommodation they provide.
DirectWithHotels offers Hotel Partners in the Americas and Spain the ability to manage their booking engine in Spanish, from setting up rate plans to handling availability.
Version 4 of the booking engine is launched, enabling any accommodation provider – from hotels to villas, from tented camps to cruise ships – to use it as a reservation system.
The scale of operations of DirectWithHotels reaches new heights.
DirectWithHotels surpasses the 1,000-hotel mark, with Hotel Partners from as many as 40 countries.
Version 5 of the booking engine, which also supports Portuguese and simplified Chinese, is launched.
DirectWithHotels taps into the fastest-growing middle-class market in the world – China.
Paid advertising tests are launched on Baidu, China’s version of Google, and a new payment gateway is integrated into the booking engine.
Version 6 of the booking engine tests a new payment gateway that supports China Union Pay, a popular mode of payment for eCommerce in China that’s many times more popular than PayPal, its counterpart in the US.
The commitment to help hotel partners get more direct bookings online leads to our best booking engine to date, converting 30% better than the previous version. That said, rigorous A/B testing continues as we continue to push our usability and technology experts to improve how well the booking engine converts the millions of browsing guests into instantly confirmed, payment guaranteed bookings.
The Hotelier Interface--our booking engine’s password-protected extranet used by Hoteliers to upload and manage rate plans and room availability--also gets a major facelift, all in the interest of making it simple for hotels to generate more direct bookings online...because "direct" is most profitable and "online" (increasingly "mobile online") is the preferred way to book travel.
