This story has been updated since it was published. On line 14, "900 properties" was changed to "9 000 properties".
Born during lockdown, Cape Town-based eBEDS is a brand-new B2B hotel aggregator that has been developed right here in South Africa.
“Seeing how much revenue South African agents redirect to giant international OTAs and aggregators made me want to create an offering that could compete with international products but at the same time allow agents to keep their revenues within South Africa,” said founder and md, Cas Hulsbosch. Hence, the idea for eBEDS was to develop an aggregator that was homegrown, locally developed, and which offered local customer support.
Cas has previous experience working for international aggregators and OTAs, as regional manager in Africa for Totalstay and as strategic partnership manager at Booking.com.
He spent much of the lockdown developing eBEDS, launching its Version One offering during November last year. It’s exclusively for trade bookings and offers an extensive range of over 700 000 hotels in more than 200 countries, compiled from an integrated offering of 75 suppliers. eBEDS also boasts an extensive local product offering of 9 000 properties, which, Cas advises, include hotels, game lodges, guesthouses and resorts.
The booking platform allows agents to stay in control of their own commercials by setting their own commission levels for each booking. Payment only needs to be made before cancellation due date. eBEDS can accept Visa, MasterCard, Amex, Diners, Virtual Cards or EFT payment methods.
eBeds provides 24-hour local telephonic support as well as WhatsApp, email and chat bot support.
