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Hotel Booking Agents Association Signs Dual Data Deals
Monday, October 27 2003 @ 11:26 AM GMT
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In two separate agreements this week, the Hotel Booking Agents Association (HBAA) signed two Data Stream Agreements - with The ABC Connection for overnight accommodation data and Venuedirectory.com for conference data.

The deals cover three separate aspects:
1. The HBAA will stream data from both data publishing organisations to supply data for `searchable` hotel and venue directories on the HBAA web site (www.hbaa.org.uk) to allow visitors to look up property information on the hotels and venues owned by HBAA Charter Partners and Charter Signees prior to directing them to the HBAA’s 55 agency members to check availability and rates - and to make a booking.
The ABC Connection has hotel data, including information on bars and restaurants, credit card acceptance and general hotel information on 15,000 UK hotels, guest-houses and lodges. Venuedirectory.com will supply conference and meetings data and has existing data entries on 4,000 UK hotels and meeting venues.
2. All visitors to the HBAA`s web site will be able to access data for HBAA Charter Partners and Charter Signees, but contact data (telephone, fax, email and web site) will be substituted with an option for the visitor to contact their preferred HBAA agency member for bookings or more information. Agency members of the HBAA will be able to access the full databases via the Members Only section of the HBAA web site.
3. HBAA Charter Partners will get free basic entries and special reduced discounts for their enhanced ‘paid-for’ entry. The HBAA Charter Partners comprise the major hotel chains such as Le Meridien, Marriott, Intercontinental Hotels and Thistle as well as smaller chains and independents such as Paten Hotels, The Berners and Chewton Glen.
These deals follow a thorough review of hotel data available through electronic publishers by the Technology Committee of the HBAA, led by Dev Anand. “We were fairly surprised by the lack of electronic publishers with seriously comprehensive data on hotels - in conference terms, covering the in depth information required such as room measurements - and for overnight accommodation, the range of hotels required, and so were delighted to find the two parties; The ABC Connection and Venuedirectory.com, who were able and willing to a deal with us. With over 55 members, each employing between a half and two and a half people on maintaining property data on our various systems, much of which gives us no real competitive advantage, these data stream deals are a very good example of how the formation of the HBAA can benefit us all” said Anand. Whilst both systems are largely UK based at this time, both companies have plans to expand their data content to cover hotels throughout the world.
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