Ebay becomes full-scale booking platform for travel offers PDF Print

Cultuzz impresses with its own checkout solution for eBay
Berlin, 01 Feb 2010

With over 250 million registered users and a trading volume of more than USD 60 billion per annum, eBay is the largest marketplace in the world. However, eBay was previously only of limited suitability for the sale of holidays or hotel stays because the system lacked a booking facility. Now Cultuzz Digital Media has developed its own checkout solution and integrated it into the eBay purchase procedure. This not only enables users to buy a voucher for the offers listed but also to carry out booking at the same time. eBay is thus becoming a full-scale booking platform for travel services.

Thanks to the new checkout solution by Cultuzz, the online sale of travel offers via eBay is increasing in importance. Cultuzz has thus sold some 750'000 hotel accommodation packages on 20 eBay markets worldwide for its hotel customers. Cultuzz is proud of being one of only eleven suppliers in the world to have been granted the right by eBay to adapt the eBay checkout process to its own requirements. Within the travel categories, Cultuzz is the only provider worldwide able to display the current availabilities of a listing and enable direct booking from the hotel's inventory after the purchase.

Technically, the current availability of a listing are queried from Cultuzz' own database system "CultSwitch". This system is a web service to which hotel management systems (PMS), destinations or central reservation systems (CRS) can send their availabilities and rates via XML. "CultSwitch" functions as a channel manager and, in line with the hotel's specifications, automatically supplies the most important distribution systems such as Booking, HRS, Expedia and of course eBay as well. As a result, the availabilities displayed on eBay are always absolutely identical with the current data of the hotel. Incoming bookings are transferred immediately to the hotel system.

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Sales via eBay can take place in either the "Auction" or "Buy it Now" formats. While an auction starts with a low price and the highest bidder wins the item, listings made under "Buy it Now" are bought at a fixed price. The travel operator or hotelier indicates the available dates when the guest may travel, thus making availability the decisive parameter on eBay. Specifying the appropriate arrival dates presents an opportunity to deliberately steer guests towards times of low occupancy Selling on eBay offers the additional advantage that the service can be described individually and there is complete freedom in the optical design of the listing. This is of particular interest for hotel chains and travel operators who wish to offer their products in line with their corporate design.

"We are proud that eBay is allowing us to seamlessly integrate our checkout solution within the eBay purchase management framework. We wish to develop eBay into a strong sales channel for travel services and are therefore quite prepared to give other system providers the opportunity to use eBay as a sales channel for their travel products within the scope of a cooperation partnership," explains Dr. Reinhard Vogel, Managing Director of Cultuzz Digital Media. Already in 2004, Cultuzz received the eBay Award in the category of "most innovative vertical solution" for the auction tool "CultBay", as one of the most user-friendly and effective sales tools for the tourism and hospitality industry.

Ebay is the world's largest online marketplace, where practically anyone can buy and sell practically anything. Founded in 1995, eBay connects a diverse and passionate community of individual buyers and sellers, as well as small businesses. Their collective impact on e-commerce is staggering: The total worth of goods sold on eBay is USD 60 billion per annum - USD 2'000 every second.

Cultuzz Digital Media GmbH was founded by Dr Reinhard Vogel in Berlin in the year 2000. Subsidiaries exist in Europe, the U.S. and Australia, as well as in India. The company is specialized in online sales and distribution for the hospitality industry and is the global market leader in selling hotel rooms on eBay.

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