Hotel Suppliers (Hotel Consolidators) are travel management companies who provide large database of hotel contents through API or XML format to various travel agents and travel startups or even to large OTAs. These hotel contents comes with all the features like rates, offers, room availability, add-on features, videos, images, facilities and many more. The inventory associated with these hotel suppliers are connected to one's hotel booking system so that their own customers can book hotels directly from their website. The B2B interface allows even the sub-agents to access the online booking system (to increase sales or bookings) to book hotels and earn commission on every booking.
Hotel suppliers are connected to travel agents and tour operators of the major cities and destinations to distribute the properties or hotel inventories. In comparison to individuals who contact hotels directly and ask for discounts, the consolidators are able to achieve deep discounts due to their buying power. Hotels are willing to offer dramatically reduced room rates to consolidators because they know it will yield a greater number of reservations. Many hotels are interested in selling room blocks (allotments) to consolidators, because they know that discounted rooms mean more business in the long run and subsequently a greater profit for them. To reach maximum local customers (end customer), hotel xml suppliers have started associating with travel agents and tour operators from each destination to sell their hotel inventories hence facilitate the distribution process.
Some hotel suppliers concentrate on every major tourist destination, big city or popular resort while some hotel suppliers concentrate on a particular geographic area trying to be most competitive on a key for the company market. Their activities involve buying blocks of rooms at volume discounts in certain major cities and distributing "excess rooms" offered by hotels not anticipating full occupancy for given dates. Same inventory of hotels are connected to online hotel booking system (hotel booking and reservation software).