Club Med has selected Accovia, the expert in IT solutions and services for the travel industry, to offer its customers a wider range of transportation solutions, from regular business-class flights to more economically-priced flights. With 75 resorts all over the world, Club Med, a major international player in the tourism industry, welcomed more than 1.2 million travelers in 2010. Given that, for the majority of its customers, any value-added services provided during a short-haul flight are significantly less important than those offered at the destination itself, Club Med is seeking to make low-cost options from commercial airlines available to its customers. Using Accovia’s advanced technology, the Group added a new service to its line: the Webtheo program, which allows Club Med to incorporate short- and medium-haul flights at prices that are often much more attractive to its customers.

Club Med Expands Its Air Transportation Offering

Already widespread in the German and UK markets, offers from low-cost airlines are perfectly suited to meet the needs of Club Med’s customers, and especially for Mediterranean destinations. In an effort to give all of its customers access to these more attractive rates and thereby promote its vacation catalog, Club Med decided to add a new product to its transportation offering.

With the Amadeus GDS system, the Group enjoyed access to commercial airlines rates but not their cheaper rates, solely available on their websites. Club Med’s goal was to offer its customers the best market prices available at any given time, in line with online rates travelers could find themselves.

As a result, Club Med has offered a more comprehensive and varied selection of transportation options since May 2010. Building on this successful initiative, the Group now regularly works with new and trustworthy airline partners like EasyJet, Air Berlin, GermanWings, TUI Fly, Transavia, Air Transat, Jet Star, Virgin Blue, and Condor.

So far, more than 3,000 vacations have already been booked on the Webtheo platform. The most popular destinations with low-cost flights are Morocco, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic.

Webtheo: Putting Accovia’s Expertise to Work for Club Med

The Webtheo project is part of Accovia’s Lexo eProcurement platform. It was developed especially for Club Med in partnership with Anaxys in order to set up connectors with low-cost transportation providers.

Accovia will thus be able to provide a complete range of connectors for the different travel and tourism service providers - transportation, hotels, car rentals, and destination activities -, and an efficient support for travel industry professionals. With its architecture entirely accessible via Web Services, these eProcurement modules integrate seamlessly with the reservations systems used by vacation package providers as a stand-alone component of the information system.

In practical terms, the solution designed for Club Med is a platform hosted by Accovia and based on the SaaS (Software as a Service) model, which gives the Group complete flexibility to test and implement new connectors, where payment is based solely on completed reservations.

“For many years, Club Med has been committed to meeting customer expectation with regard to both resort experience and transportation quality. Today we have decided to go even further. Not only do we want to offer top-quality service, we want to do it at a more affordable price point. So we are thrilled with this partnership, which opens up a range of attractive pricing options to our customers when they need it,” says Hervé Djiane-Gicquel, Transportation Director, Club Med.

“Low-cost companies can no longer be ignored, and it was essential that we provide our customers with this option. The successful combination of low-cost services with high-end products, such as those offered by Club Med, clearly demonstrates that we have met the needs of those clients looking for the best possible price. So we are very happy to have been a part of the success of this new business strategy,” says Patrick Bleu, Vice-President Marketing and Product Strategy and Managing Director of Accovia France.