Our history
Established in 1998.
In 1998, Webjet began as a small start-up seeking to disrupt traditional norms in the highly competitive online travel industry. In just over 10 years, Webjet became the #1 OTA in the Australian and New Zealand market. Our success was fuelled by a culture founded on customer focus, innovation, and creativity.
Expanding into Wholesale Travel (B2B)
We took this culture overseas in 2013 when we established WebBeds in Dubai, and again sought to disrupt the industry, although this time in B2B wholesale travel distribution. In just over 6 years, WebBeds became the #2 global B2B provider.
• The B2B travel market is estimated to be more than US$50 billion in TTV and is an important part of the global travel market.
• In general, hotels use a combination of their own websites, direct-to-consumer (B2C) and intermediaries (B2B) to help sell hotel rooms.
• The B2B segment provides hotels with longer lead time bookings and lower cancellation rates than direct to consumer bookings. While hotels pay commission to B2C providers for hotel rooms sales, hotels provide nightly room allotments at negotiated net rates to B2B providers. B2B also provides a wide range of global travel businesses with the aggregation, products, technology & services required to compete.
• The B2B market is highly fragmented, with very few global players. WebBeds is the #2 global provider and yet we have less than 4% market share. The majority of B2B participants having specialised local offerings and small market share.
Ongoing industry consolidation represents significant opportunity for WebBeds to gain share.
WebBeds is a travel trade wholesaler, an intermediary between hotels (looking to fill hotel rooms) and travel provider clients (looking to find hotel rooms for the travelling public).
WebBeds provides fast, easy access to global hotel room inventory to more than 40,000 clients comprising retail travel agents, corporate travel agents, wholesalers, tour operators, airlines, super apps and OTAs.
WebBeds offer rooms at more than 400,000 hotels around the world. The majority of our hotel partners are small, independent hotels and we provide an alternative distribution channel for their rooms.
WebBeds seeks to offer its clients the greatest breadth and depth of hotel inventory at highly competitive prices.
Unlike most B2B providers, WebBeds use a combination of directly contracted and third-party inventory to provide our clients access to rooms at more than 400,000 hotels around the world. We focus our important direct contracts on key strategic destinations while more than 70 third party providers help supplement our global hotel offering.
This multi-supply aggregation strategy helps WebBeds deliver a full global inventory offering while keeping costs low.
WebBeds multi-supply aggregation strategy delivers:
- Greatest breadth and depth of hotel inventory – by using a combination of directly contracted and 3rd Party inventory, we provide clients a global offering through “one connection”. Our multi-supply aggregation strategy also allows us to draw on multiple sources to fulfil accommodation requests at times of peak demand.
- Low cost model – our entire offering was designed to disrupt by providing a global offering at a lower cost. Higher cost direct contracts are focused on key strategic destinations and 3rd Party providers broaden our offering without the need to increase contracting costs. We also have cost effective customer support centres and Rezchain (our industry leading blockchain solution) is helping drive efficiencies.
- Global scale – many clients use more than one B2B provider to access hotel rooms. As the #2 global player selling to over 200 destination countries through customers in more than 140 source markets worldwide, WebBeds is meaningful to both our clients and hotel partners. As the fastest growing player in the world, we are able to leverage our global scale across both source and destination markets to drive demand for rooms which in turn helps drive improved room allotments.
- Highly competitive prices – our multi-supply aggregation strategy means we are able to access room rates from multiple supply sources. We only display the lowest priced option meaning our clients only see the most competitive room rate.
- Market leading, user-friendly technology – our clients can access our global inventory through either XML or direct website connections. The vast majority of clients use high-speed XML connections which offer sub-second response processing times.
Expanding Consumer Travel Offering
And then in 2016, we acquired GoSee (formerly Online Republic) as we saw a company with massive potential, with a culture that was extremely similar to ours and with established leadership positions in their travel B2C travel verticals.
Webjet Limited Group today.
Today, our digital travel businesses, spanning both wholesale and retail markets, sell travel all over the world, supported by smart technology we build and invest in that differentiates our offerings and make booking and transacting travel better. You can find out more about our travel brands and technology business and investments in Our Businesses.
Strategic objectives.
The Covid-19 pandemic has had devasting impacts on our industry, however with markets re-opening and countries easing travel entry requirements, there is significant growth opportunities across all our businesses to deliver upon our strategic objectives.
To become the
#1 global B2B provider
Increase
market share leadership
Transformational
opportunity
Visit Our Businesses to learn more about each business. More detail around Group Strategy can be found in our FY22 Company Review.
Timelines & milestones
Scroll through our timelines and key milestones for an overview of our evolution, including key acquisitions, brand launches and investments that support our strategic objectives.
Our approach to Sustainability.
We are committed to creating sustainable earnings and capital growth for our shareholders and to support all our stakeholders including employees, suppliers, customers and the communities that we serve.
Our sustainability framework centres around three principles: making a positive social impact, reducing our operational impact on the environment and maintaining ethical corporate governance processes.
Details of the current sustainability initiatives Webjet Limited is undertaking to make better choices for our business, our communities and the environment are set out in our latest Sustainability Report. Download: FY22 Sustainability Report.
Social
Making a positive social impact.
We believe we can best make a positive social impact and create value by maintaining a highly engaged workforce, protecting human rights and mitigating modern slavery, maintaining high customer engagement and supporting communities. We acknowledge our responsibility goes beyond risk management and the importance of creating value for our team, our customers and our communities.
Environment
Reducing our operational impact on the environment.
We accept that our customers, shareholders, employees and the community expect that we will operate our businesses in an environmentally responsible manner, and recognise the importance of doing so. We are focused on minimising our own environmental impact and looking for ways to reduce our footprint. We also recognise we can play an important role in educating our customers and the travelling public on the economic, social and environmental impacts of their travel.
Governance
Maintaining ethical corporate governance processes.
We are committed to an ethical and transparent approach to business. We realise running an ethical business goes beyond managing just the behaviour of our team. It extends to complying with regulations and maintaining best practice corporate governance, particularly when it comes to data privacy and security, and maintaining high standards of business ethics.
Our company values.
All of our successes and growth have been made possible by our culture, embodied in our people, which is underpinned by five key values – Respect, Integrity, Delivering Value, Agility & Hunger to Win.
Respect.
Our people are our greatest asset. They bring passion, commitment, dedication, and pride in what they do. We respect each other, we value collaboration, we are prepared to have robust debate and we have fun in what we do.
Integrity.
We are focused on delivering superior outcomes. We always seek to do the right thing and value integrity, accountability and delivering quality in everything we do.
Delivering value.
We are focused on delivering high quality products, excellence in customer service, maintaining strong relationships with our supply partners, providing an engaging and supportive work environment for our employees, and delivering value for our shareholders and the broader community.
Agility.
Unafraid to disrupt traditional norms, we constantly challenge ourselves to look for new ways to win and deliver value. Our people are agile and nimble and we empower them to effect change.
Hunger to win.
As we grow, we remember our humble roots and always strive to retain the spirit that comes with being the challenger brand. We constantly seek to challenge ourselves to find new growth opportunities, innovations and creative ways to deliver value across all aspects of our business. We value curiosity, being brave and having confidence to try new things.
