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GTA hosts European sales, sourcing and operations conference

GTA hosts European sales, sourcing and operations conference

240 senior travel representatives visit Prague this week as global travel distributor GTA holds its first annual European Sourcing, Sales and Operations conference in the Czech capital. The conference will be held at the InterContinental Prague on the banks of the Vltava River and offering captivating views of the “’city of one hundred spires’.

The conference agenda explores GTA’s future strategy to help retail and wholesale, high street and online travel agents and tour operators benefit from its extraordinary global distribution network. It follows news that GTA’s parent, the Kuoni Group, plans to focus activities on providing services to the global travel industry and to governments. Its new strategic direction will lead to further investment to secure even greater profitability for GTA’s already successful business. In the last three years alone, the business has grown by 6.5% a year (CAGR) and sells 38,000 room nights online every day.

John Taker, Vice President for Hotel Sourcing in Europe, says: “GTA has been powering global travel for four decades. Our global presence in source markets and destinations worldwide, the experience and expertise of our people, and the unrivalled performance of our technology and systems continue to help businesses accommodate fully independent travellers (FIT) in practically every part of the planet.

“Our increased investment in the region has helped Prague become a great success story with room nights rising +65% in the last three years alone with other cities in the region such as Budapest also benefiting from interest in the country from travellers worldwide. Even this brief taste of the Czech experience will help our teams educate travel agents and tour operators and attract more visitors from both established and developing source markets.”

With attractive long-term growth potential and already globally leading positions, three strategic initiatives – the expansion of its footprint and its service offering and the introduction of further digitalisation – will accelerate growth and drive success for the travel, tourism and hospitality businesses that remain GTA’s customers.

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GTA will continue to focus on finding the right accommodation, services, tours and activities at the best possible price in ‘strong hold’ destinations: the travel ‘hot spots’ that consumers most want to visit. It will also ensure that travellers can still benefit from a growing ‘long tail’ of accommodation in less familiar locations away from the traditional tourism trails.

Generating tens of thousands of bookings for hotels, attractions and other tourism businesses every day, GTA sells millions of room nights in more than 25 languages online and throughout the world. Today, travel agents across the planet rely on GTA to help them provide their customers – the travelling public – with the accommodation, services, excursions and experiences they most want to enjoy.