Travelport and HRS, a global hotel solutions provider, have announced a multi-year global distribution agreement.

The new agreement will add over 70,000 incremental hotels from HRS’ properties, the majority of which are independent hotels, to Travelport’s Travel Commerce Platform.

This gives the private hotel providers access to Travelport’s 67,000 connected agencies worldwide and the additional independent hotel content will help travel agents provide more choice and service to both leisure and business travellers.

The HRS inventory will be fully integrated later in the year into the agent’s normal workflow, eliminating the time-consuming and inefficiency of booking across different channels.

The agreement also gives Travelport-connected agents access to the HRS Business Tariff program which provides special corporate rates for more than 35,000 hotels globally.

HRS chief executive Tobias Ragge said: “Travelport’s platform enables us to reach new travel buyers globally, thus boosting the reach of our global hotel partners and ensure a significant increase in hotel bookings.

“It gives travel agencies and companies access to new hotel properties and enables them to find the right content, all within an efficient booking process a win for all parties involved and a key milestone in our multi-channel strategy.”

The agreement with HRS follows other recent Travelport announcements relating to its “Beyond Air” strategy which include the acquisition of Travel IT in January 2015 and Hotelzon in June 2014.

Niklas Andreen, global vice president hotel, car and digital media commerce at Travelport said: “HRS is an important hotel distribution player in the travel industry, particularly in Germany, and we look forward to integrating their sought after hotel content to our travel agency and corporate customer base.

“It is an exciting partnership and one that forms part of our ongoing strategy to redefine travel commerce and extend our Beyond Air offering in hotels and cars, with a particular focus on growing in both the hotel and corporate travel space.”