Tourico Launches Group Business Bidding Engine

Tourico Holidays, a wholesale travel broker based in Orlando, launched a Group Bidding Engine that enables travel agents and other distributors to put their specific group reservation requests up for bid by hotels. Using the engine, agents can search for hotels based on destination, the number of rooms desired, check-in and checkout dates and star ratings. They can filter their results in a number of ways, including location, hotel names and brands, price range, and amenities. Agents then select up to seven specific hotels from which they’d like to receive pricing quotes.

 Once a request is submitted, the automated system notifies the selected hotels and initiates a 24-hour period where they can adjust rates multiple times in order to win the group business. Agents can review the quotes in real time and select a hotel at any point during the 24 hours or within 24 hours of its expiration. The system provides the opportunity to bundle the hotel booking with transfers, activities and attractions in a single transaction.

 –Michele McDonald