Face-to-Face: Jackie Lastras
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This week, we chat with Jackie Lastras, relations manager Asia Pacific for Methabook, which has recently launched in Bangkok as part of its Asia Pacific expansion strategy…
Q) You recently set up Methabook’s first Asian office in Bangkok; can you give us a little background about the company?
Methabook, formerly Solole, started in Spain in 2007 as a travel agency selling hotels, transfers, events and tour tickets.
The company started as the economic crisis hit the country but the founders were entering the retail sector with a different concept of what was available in terms of booking reservation systems, which helped a lot to get recognise and become one of the top three bed banks in Spain.
Since then, it has been an endless improvement, offering the latest technology to serve our agencies better in terms of inventory, transparency and instant bookings confirmation. We are still making changes to keep up with the market, and we’ve started contracting hotels directly to carry on boosting our rates, which are still one of our best assets until today.
Methabook now is a state of the art B2B hotel platform providing more than a 150,000 hotels worldwide and servicing more than 5,000 clients in Europe and the Americas. The headquarters have been relocated to Dubai and we have kept the South American and European offices in place. With the office in Bangkok we plan to secure a foothold across Asia Pacific from which further progress will be made in this part of the world.
Q) What are you bringing to the region’s travel trade that is different from what is currently available?
It is a combination of things that when all rolled up together produce greater results and make us who we are. We come with our own processes, standards, structures and methods of communicating, which make our product and services incredible easy and convenient. Also, we have fused a sequence of technologies with a service model that has been working very well for thousands of agencies and wholesalers.
Our beliefs and our values create the common ground platform in how we work together and how we serve our clients. We want our clients to make an easy, safe and right choice when booking with us, that’s why we provide them with features, information, benefits which save time, reduce stress and offer a friendly working experience.
And last but not least is our product. We have heard agencies saying that when none of their suppliers give them the availability or rate they are looking for. They need look no further at Methabook.
Q) How big is your hotel portfolio in Asia and are you seeing strong interest from hotels in the region?
We have 150,000 hotels worldwide, so pretty much the majority of Asian hotels, and we are very impressed to see how many properties are approaching us directly. Even though it is not our main focus at the moment we are warmly welcoming . If they give us a good deal, then makes perfectly sense to sell their hotel rooms too.
In terms of our direct contract, we have around 11,500 hotels worldwide, and we will concentrate more in our direct business as we identify the needs from our first clients in the region. But now as we build partnerships across Asia Pacific we are able to strength our portfolio too.
Q) What Asian markets do you think have the biggest potential for the company?
To drill-down and get more realistic with our niche target in the first years, I would say that are the wholesalers per region or country who can connect with us through XML/API as it is one of our strengths. This is due to several changes the hotel makes constantly and the beauty of the technology that supports and implements the connection efficiently in the booking process.
At the moment the awareness is through referrals, word of mouth and fairs, those are the first alliances we are making which is already a good number as those are relationship we have built through the years and our closest connections. This also gives us time to digest the first responses and feedback we are receiving to make the right decisions we plan in taking to fulfil the demand of the travel wholesalers across Asia Pacific.
Q) What further developments from Methabook can we expect to see in the next 12 months?
More partnerships, improved booking process and improved rates for the travel trade not only throughout Europe and the Americas but also Middle East and Asia Pacific. The list is long, as we are adding more hotel inventory; it will lead to more software development too.
We are also connecting with our clients in so many levels which requires a lot of our time but we consider extremely important that we provide the correct knowledge about our products and services. We are showing our clients why they can trust us and the functionality we could bring to their business.
Methabook is also adapting, I am very content to work with a company that is open to understanding and adjusting. It is not an obstacle at all to shape and customise the way we will collaborate with every client, so it’s really an exciting time for us to show what we offer in a much more authentic experience by adding flexible touches.
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