Galileo’s Best Available Rate (BAR) guarantee programme has added its 100th hotel brand. The latest addition is Leading Hotels of the World who join hotel chains including Accor, Intercontinental, Choice, and Marriott.

The Galileo BAR programme enables major hotel chains to provide travel agents with access to the best available published, non-restricted rates offered through any other CRS, GDS or other online distribution channels. The addition of these latest hotel chains brings the total number of properties covered by the programme to over 28,000 properties, representing over 50% of hotel bookings made in the Galileo GDS so far this year.

Galileo was the first Global Distribution System to launch a hotel programme of this kind and continues to lead in terms of number of hotels signed up. Those hotels that have opted to participate in the BAR programme have seen an increase in their bookings of up to 30%.

“The reassurance of knowing that the hotel rate we see is the best available is a great benefit to us and our travellers,” said Gill Goodship, Head of Customer Servicing for Portman Travel and in charge of Portman’s expanding hotel operations. “It saves us time as we do not have to search through a number of different sources, and with the Galileo BAR programme, we know that we are in the best possible position to benefit from this initiative.”

“As the first GDS to offer this programme to our customers we are delighted to have reached this milestone and continue to lead the hotel distribution world,” said Jane Lewis, Director of Hospitality Distribution, EMEA, Asia and Pacific. “Our programme provides travel agents with the confidence that the rate they see is the best available. This addresses the inconsistency of hotel rates across distribution channels and allows our travel agents to save time by only needing to search in one place.”
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