The consolidation process in the bed bank segment of the travel industry is in full swing and has reached another peak with last week’s anouncement of Hotelbeds about the acquisition of GTA.
After Hotelbeds having acquired Tourico already two months ago, the three major players in this segment are becoming one.
Where will this lead to besides the usual synergies such as consolidation of operational costs?
Obviously this new bedbank giant has a much bigger leverage in purchasing. But will hotels accept this? Does it make sense for hotels to be confronted with a distribution partner, which, due to its sheer power could dictate conditions or would they start searching for alternative distribution channels. They are already under pressure from B2Cs like Booking.com, Expedia and such. Will they accept a similar dominating situation in the B2B distribution? Some at least might consider to diversify the distribution to the smaller bedanks, DMCs  and even offer direct contracts to travel companies.
What happens on the other side of the industry. Will travel agencies, OTAs and tour operators accept the loss of freedom of choice? The content of the three providers might be complementary, but it is definitely overlapping in many important destinations. For travel companies, it is already very difficult to distinguish themselves from competitors and it becomes even more difficult with this merger.
Some therefore might consider diversifying their procurement by purchasing from smaller, regional based bedbanks, DMCs and directly from hotels.
Consequently everything could come to full circle again.