At the last edition of ITB Berlin, the world’s largest tourism show held from 4-8 March, Value Retail presented two innovative travel partnerships.
Value Retail has become the first retailer to offer its travel partners online training. This will help trade partners to discover all that the village collection has to offer its clients in a dynamic, agile and efficient way.
Value Retail’s online travel training is the tourism industry’s leading e-learning platform, which offers the greatest number of courses designed by industry experts. The courses will be available on ChicOutletShopping.com in 10 languages, and will cover the following:
- The experience awaiting visitors at the villages.
- The full range of services and amenities available to visitors at each village.
- How to book and sell packages for the villages.
- The new Suzhou Village in China.
- Business tourism opportunities (MICE).
The training programme’s first module was launched at ITB on 4 March, where people visiting Value Retail’s stand had the chance to discover and try out this new innovative tool.
Julia Feuell, director general of the training programme, stated: "Our e-learning platform promises to improve Value Retail’s luxury experience at its collection of villages, by means of cutting-edge digital marketing technology, both for travel agents and tour operators, as well as its clients all over the world."
The first retail outlet group to partner with Ctrip
Thanks to another pioneering partnership, Value Retail has become the first retail outlet operator in the world to sign an agreement with Ctrip, China’s top online travel agency. Ctrip – which represents 50% of the online travel market in China – offers hotel bookings, plane tickets and tourist packages for both Chinese business travellers and tourists, as well as providing over 90 million travellers with services via both online and offline channels.
This new partnership will make it possible to offer Value Retail’s village collection experience to an even wider audience in China, offering them support and facilitating their individual travel needs, thus making it easier for them to include a visit to one of the villages in their itinerary.
Ian Stazicker, group tourism manager at Value Retail, commented: "Value Retail and Ctrip are natural partners, since both organizations are committed to creating exceptional experiences for Chinese tourists in Europe. The collection’s European villages are very popular destinations with Chinese tourists, and this new alliance with Ctrip will allow our luxury village experience to be more accessible than ever to our Chinese clients."
ITB Berlin was Elise Guingand’s first event with Value Retail. Recently appointed to the post of director of international tourism, Guingard – who is French by birth, and speaks English, Spanish and Russian – has previously occupied the post of sales marketing and key account manager at Global Blue, as well as working for BNP Paribas.
La Roca Village
