Hotelbeds, the parent company of both GTA and Bedsonline has today announced the launch of new, fully automated loyalty platform for retail clients in Korea.

The Star Rewards programme is a vastly improved loyalty scheme for retail clients, offering a faster, automated and more user-friendly interface to drive up bookings in exchange for vouchers which can be redeemed online against a wide range of products and services from leading brands.

Replacing its predecessor G-Shop which was used by legacy GTA clients, the new platform offers points to retail customers for every booking made through the Bedsonline booking platform. Clients can accumulate points in return for vouchers that can be spent on a wide range of goods and services via a user-friendly online interface.

Following extensive consultation with customers it has been decided that the GTA retail brand^[1] in the Korean market will progressively rebrand under Bedsonline, the retail travel agency brand of parent group Hotelbeds.

As part of this change the combination of the GTA retail brand’s content with the existing Bedonline hotel offering will increase from 55,000 to 180,000 the number of hotels available to customers.

Victoria Fernandez, Retention Marketing Manager at Hotelbeds, explains: “Now that we have moved all legacy GTA clients to the new platform, we need to go a step further and test the scheme with more clients who were not previously members of any of our loyalty schemes.”

“The benefits of Star Rewards are three-fold. We have connected the Business Intelligence database, where all the bookings are stored, with the incentives platform. This means that clients can see how many points they have earned on a daily basis and convert them into vouchers.

“We have also signed single catalogue agreements with just a handful of providers for different regions offering access to a wider range of products and services than ever before, including household brands such as Amazon, Nike or Apple. New vendors are automatically added to the new catalogue which is being updated all the time. 

“Last but not least, all the vouchers can be redeemed online which means the client can receive their product or service, without any intervention from Hotelbeds.”

Giny Jin-Young Jun, Regional Sales Manager, South East Asia and Korea at Bedsonline, comments: “I am pleased to confirm that in Korea, we will have all of our customers on board, as we have now moved all G-shop clients to the new platform, and we will start rolling out the programme to all remaining clients. Star Rewards marks a step change in the way we offer incentives to clients, moving towards an increasingly automated model. We are confident that Star Rewards will incentivize our existing clients to place more bookings with us and help us to increase our competitive position in this market. We will monitor client behavior on the platform and adapt their strategy where necessary and incentivize clients through targeted campaigns in order to drive bookings and further growth for the business “

When put together, Bedsonline offers customers a 360 degree travel partner offering that is customer centric and helps partners compete by offering unrivalled technology, the most competitive commercial terms, swift problem resolution and expert team support.