Digital distribution and growth for small Spanish hotels

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Why this program?

  • Tourism is vital to Spain, accounting for approximately 11.6% of the country’s GDP in 2022, generating 135 billion euros. The industry also supported about 9.3% of total employment, equating to nearly 1.95 million jobs. The impact of tourism is even more pronounced in regions like the Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands, and Andalusia.
  • Tourism-focused micro- and small enterprises (MSEs) in Spain face several digitalization challenges, including a lack of digital skills and limited know-how in digital marketing and data management. Only 11% of small tourism businesses in Spain use digital tools to manage their internal processes.
  • The fragmented nature of small hotels can make them hard to find and resource-intensive to contract for large distributors. This program seeks to combat this challenge to support the growth of smaller and less digitized hotels across Spain, ensuring their access to a greater share of the country’s growing tourism economy. 

Program overview

By adapting the business-to-business (B2B) Connectycs platform to the needs of small and less digitized hotels, this program will engage up to 10% of all Spanish hotels with fewer than 100 rooms. It will enable them to reach new clients (including large tour operators), make and receive digital payments, and access AI-enabled insights on reservations to inform decisions on pricing strategies and business operations. 

Mastercard Strive will enhance the existing Connectycs platform to make it more relevant to small hotels through:

  1. Digital distribution: Enabling small hotels to reach and contract with large tour operators and manage their B2B clients more effectively. This will expand small hotels’ online sales and minimize transaction costs, but also save time by centralizing all business operations on the platform.
  2. Digital operations and finance: Supporting small hotels to make and receive digital payments and immediate access to funds through digital wallets. The platform will also offer flexible commission rates, simplify online bookings and cancellation policies, and create personalized rates and special deals. This enables hotel owners to securely gain greater control over their operations and provide more personalized offers to customers.
  3. AI-enabled insights: Providing aggregated analyses on bookings, reservations, transactions, and more, to allow small hotels to take more informed decisions on pricing strategies and broader operations. These data-driven insights will include optimal room rate suggestions, tourist preferences, and strategies to enhance operational efficiency.

Instituto Tecnológico Hotelero (ITH), the digital innovation arm of the Spanish hotel industry, will support the platform’s outreach to find and onboard relevant small hotels across Spain and drive impact at scale. 

Through a comprehensive marketing approach and prominent industry events such as the ITH Summit, ITH will encourage relevant small hotels, especially those that are less familiar with digital tools, to explore the new Connectycs platform and benefit from its enhanced features to digitize their sales, operations, and access to finance.

About Connectycs

Founded in 2017, Connectycs is a technology provider for the hotel Industry, empowering suppliers and clients in their direct commercial relations. The Connectycs solution enables technological mediation to empower both suppliers and B2B clients to settle direct agreements with total transparency and absolute traceability of the distribution process.

About ITH

The Instituto Tecnológico Hotelero (ITH) is the Spanish hotel sector’s response to the challenges and opportunities that technological advances bring for entrepreneurs in the tourism industry. With more than eighteen years of experience, this innovation center, under the Spanish Confederation of Hotels and Tourist Accommodation (CEHAT), has a mission to promote the use of new technologies and management systems, which contribute to improving the competitiveness, profitability, quality, and efficiency and sustainability of small businesses in the tourism industry.

“For the first time, small hotels in Spain will gain the ability to optimize their distribution and pricing strategy with real-time insights, streamline operational processes, enhance revenue collections, and access new funding sources through FinPay, the Connectycs electronic money institution. This will save small hotels’ time and increase their profitability.”

Javier Soriano

CEO of Connectycs

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