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The following communiqué has been received from Global Destination Management (GDM ), the company that provides hotel deals to the university sector. It outlines where GDM are expanding the inventory on the edu. Go Blue website by using hotel consolidators (wholesalers) in selected countries.
You can book GDM hotels direct and online via the edu. Go Blue website.
Over the last two months, GDM has negotiated with local wholesalers for hotel room rates in Singapore, mainland China and UK/Europe. This was done to overcome the problem with annual increases in hotel room rates due to poor production and also to greatly increase the inventory of hotel choice. Wholesalers act as hotel consolidators and on sell to the travel industry who, with mark-ups on sells to the public – such as Flightcentre, Harvey World, etc < /p>
Rates given to GDM by the wholesalers are the same as given to the travel industry and thus are very competitive and they have agreed for us to make them available to University staff, via Go Blue, without any mark-up.
Unlike many of the hotels listed on the GDM /GoBlue website that are negotiated by GDM direct with hotels and which are on the basis of pay on departure, wholesalers require prepayment in full and there are conditions regarding cancellations and/or amendments. These conditions are clearly shown on the GDM / Goblue website and are also available by contacting GDM on gdm1@bigpond.net.au.
Negotiations are underway to find wholesalers in the United States and Canada.
As prepayment is a requirement when dealing with wholesalers, GDM have been very careful in our selection with these off shore companies. All are IATA accredited and are bonded with their local associations. Those we have loaded have a wording beside their name ‘prepayment’ and already quite a few reservations have been made via GDM using these rates.
Attached is a comparison for the UK /Europe rates as compared with those shown on the Quickbeds, Hotelclub & Octopustravel web sites as at April 2006.
Kind regards,
Bill Newton, (Director - GDM )
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