New interfaces to Verwoehnwochenende.de and Voordeluitjes.nl
Berlin, 17 September 2019. The CultSwitch channel manager for hotels now offers interfaces to the most important travel portals specializing in short-term journeys. In addition to the market leaders Kurzurlaub.de and Kurz-mal-weg.de, CultSwitch users can now also market their rooms via Verwoehnwochenende.de and Voordeluitjes.nl from the Netherlands. The innovative Berlin-based online sales service provider thus offers its customers the opportunity to benefit from the ongoing trend towards short and city breaks.
The travel trend for short breaks is unbroken: The number of short-break trips (2-4 days) by Germans aged 14 to 75 rose again in 2018 to a total of 88 million. In addition, such trips are increasingly being booked via digital channels; in 2018, 80 percent of short-break trips were booked via digital channels compared to 77 percent in 2017 (source: VIR Verband Internet Reisevertrieb e.V. and FUR Forschungsgemeinschaft Urlaub und Reisen e.V.). Almost three quarters of these trips (74.2 per cent) took place in Germany; the share of city breaks was 35 per cent (source: Deutscher Reiseverband (DRV)).
CultSwitch now serves this growing market with four interfaces to relevant partner portals. Kurzurlaub.de, a service of Super Urlaub GmbH based in Schwerin, claims to be the market leader for short trips in Germany between two and five days. Throughout the year, the travel portal offers more than 30,000 different short-break packages with hotel arrangements. Following the acquisition of the Austrian portal Kurzurlaub.at in March 2019, the Kurzurlaub network now has an annual reach of 322 million page views, 1.43 million Facebook fans, 85,000 followers on Instagram and 850,000 newsletter subscribers.
Kurz-mal-weg.de (KMW Reisen GmbH from Hamburg/Leipzig) has also specialized in short-break hotel arrangements for Germany and neighbouring countries. The online travel portal belongs to the Fit Reisen Group, which positions itself as number 1 for health and wellness trips in Germany. Therefore kurz-mal-weg.de focuses on extraordinary auxiliary services e.g. in the areas of wellness, romance, culture or family. The offers of hotel partners are marketed on online portals in Germany, Austria and Switzerland (Kurz-Mal-Weg.de, Kurz-Mal-Weg.at and Kurz-Mal-Weg.ch), which generate more than 10 million page views and 1.62 million unique visitors per month.
Completely new in CultSwitch’s channel portfolio are Verwoehnwochenende.de and Voordeluitjes.nl. Verwoehnwochenende.de from Krefeld-Uerdingen, founded in 2001, is also one of the leading online portals for short-break trips in Germany today. The focus is on weekend and short holiday packages in the wellness and romance segments. Approx. 2.5 million visitors per year plan their short getaway on the web pages of Verwoehnwochenende.de. Further arguments for hotel partners are good search engine rankings with high performing keywords, a strong partner network and regular online and offline marketing measures, according to Verwoehnwochenende.de.
Voordeluitjes.nl is the largest provider in the leisure sector (50+ guests) in the Netherlands and, like the portals mentioned above, specializes in hotel arrangements in Benelux and Germany. The Dutch and Belgians are an important target group for German hotels, especially those in relative proximity to the border: for many years, Germany has been the No. 1 travel destination for the Dutch, and they represent by far the largest group of foreign accommodation guests (with approx. 11.4 million overnight stays in German accommodation establishments in 2018; source: Destatis). Voordeluitjes.nl, the booking portal of the hospitality service provider Freetime Company from Lochem, offers hotel partners a unique market position in the Netherlands, a popular web portal with more than 2 million visitors per month, regular promotions as well as advertising and marketing measures in online and offline media including TV and radio.