Tourism Exchange Great Britain (TXGB) aims to be a one-stop shop for English suppliers to link to distributors with international reach and sell accommodation and attractions overseas.
Carol Dray, commercial director at VisitEngland, said: “TXGB will drive bookings for the hundreds of thousands of tourism businesses in England by making it easier for them to access new markets and ultimately more customers.
“England’s tourism product will be on show internationally to global distributors and their customers; promoting the latest tourism products, services and experiences, driving bookings and inbound tourism across the country, boosting regional economies.”
By linking to suppliers’ booking systems, TXGB feeds live availability and pricing as well as product descriptions, images and relevant content into national and international distributor sites such as Booking.com, Ctrip and Expedia.
Suppliers can select as many distributors as they want by agreeing to respective terms, conditions and fees. The platform also gives suppliers access to booking data and sales analytics so businesses can identify trends across all distribution channels.
Connection to TXGB, developed and operated by technology partners Rainmaker and V3, is free for English tourism businesses. Commission is paid to distributors they opt into plus a 2.5% + VAT TXGB booking fee.
Distributors benefit from a wide range of England tourism products, a connection either via TXGB’s free white-label tools or an open API linking online systems of suppliers and distributors, allowing full customisation of pages. TXGB also provides email and telephone support for suppliers and distributors.
TXGB can also be used by destinations to make all tourism products within them available to distributors in one place.
TXGB is launched in conjunction with Taking England to the World, VisitEngland’s training programme for England’s travel trade.
Training sessions start in Manchester on 4 July with Google Digital Garage. They are designed to make businesses ‘international-ready’, with modules covering types of inbound travellers, how to calculate pricing and working with the media.
