RateHawk.com delivers strong Q4 2019 results in the UK

The total gross booking value in the UK doubled compared to Q3 2019, and the total number of bookings made by the UK partners increased by 80% compared to the third quarter. The number of partners in the UK increased 25% by the end of Q4 2019, and by the end of the year, more than 800 UK travel professionals had been using and benefiting from the platform. The total number of RateHawk partners globally has reached 15,000 from over 100 countries.

The top domestic destinations in terms of bookings, made by UK travel partners, in Q4 2019 were London, Manchester, and Liverpool. The leading choices for outbound trips were Saudi Arabia (Mecca, Medina), the USA (Las Vegas, New York), Germany (Munich, Berlin), the UAE (Dubai), Russia (Moscow), Italy (Rome, Venice), France (Paris), Spain (Barcelona, Madrid), Turkey (Istanbul).

The preferred accommodation category booked in Q4 were 4-star hotels (44% of total Q4 bookings). This was followed by  5-star hotels (28%), and then by 3-star hotels (20%).

Felix Shpilman, CEO of RateHawk, commented: “We recorded a strong fourth quarter in the UK driven by the competitive strengths of our product and the outstanding efforts made by our local UK team. The revenue result marks a quarterly record for the company’s performance in the UK, exceeding the quarterly target. For 2020, we expect to continue delivering solid long-term growth while staying focused on technology improvements, acquiring new partners, activating the existing ones and implementing important API integrations.”

RateHawk officially launched in the UK in 2018. The service sources its inventory – more than 1,3 million hotels, apartments, and hostels – from over 100 suppliers worldwide and 30,000 direct hotel contracts. Today it provides the UK travel industry with in-house, multilingual customer support teams and a number of processing currencies, which include Sterling.

In 2019 RateHawk was localized into Greek, Serbian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Turkish and Romanian languages. The platform went through a redesign which made it adaptive for mobile devices and tablets. Major updates were made to the room section on the hotel page, making it more functional and easier for travel professionals to compare rates and work with them.

“We receive a lot of positive feedback from our partners who recognize the benefits that RateHawk brings to them. Our outstanding operations, pre-check service, intuitive interface, and interactive map are just a few of these. We will continue investing our resources into product and customer service in the UK,” says Felix Shpilman.

RateHawk is owned by Emerging Travel Group, an international online travel group that operates in over 100 source markets with the brands RateHawk, ZenHotels, and Ostrovok.