At the Advantage Conference today taking place in Cancun’s Costa Mujeres, it was announced that The Advantage Travel Partnership and Hickory Global Partners have established a strategic joint venture for their accommodation programmes to create Global Stays–The Accommodation Network.

Global Stays will become effective for the 2025 programme and offer more than 60,000 properties worldwide and over 1 million serviced apartments.

The combined accommodation network will be available to 1,900+ travel management companies, TMC’s, Corporate Travel Departments and Corporate Direct, across 158 countries around the world, with a total accommodation spend of $2.9 Billion. The Global Stays Network will provide significantly enhanced opportunities to our collective members and will significantly broaden their combined accommodation offerings. It will also offer suppliers more reach through combined marketing resources and aligned operational efficiencies that will focus on the common goal of delivering more value to the end customer.

Currently, The Advantage Global Hotel Programme (GAP) is a market-leading global accommodation proposition available for all Advantage members to book via the GDS. The programme currently offers 42,000+ properties that offers accommodation options from global chain hotels to independent properties and serviced apartments.

The Hickory Global Partners Hotel Program currently encompasses 1,500 locations representing 50,000+ suppliers for Travel Management Companies (TMCs) Corporate Travel Departments (CTDs), and corporations in 71 countries and 1,081 cities that book over $1.6 Billion in hotel spend annually. Hickory also delivers access to airline, and ground transportation supplier solutions across its full spectrum of members via strategic supplier relationships.

John Hobbs Hurrell, Head of Advantage Global Network, said: “We have enjoyed a long and mutually beneficial partnership with Hickory for many years, and though our many collaborations together have become the voice of independent TMCs globally. This joint venture brings us even closer together and further strengthens our relationship, providing a perfect platform to deliver significantly more hotels for our collective membership as well as provide more opportunities for our hotel and serviced apartment suppliers.”

Global Stays brings together Advantage’s dominant presence in the UK and the global reach of the Advantage Global Network, together with Hickory Global Partners' market-leading membership in North America, a global reach, and broad supplier verticals, to create a truly global and robust accommodation programme with a vastly increased scale.  It will greatly enhance the number of hotels that can be offered to our members and creates further revenue and marketing opportunities for hotel and supplier partners.”

Chris Dane, President of Hickory Global Partners, added: “We couldn't be more pleased with the deepening of the relationship between Advantage and Hickory. The expansion of our aligned business efforts will bring much more value to the TMC and MICE member networks and a larger audience to our air, hotel, and ground suppliers.” In addition, we see the deeper relationship between our companies, and our parent company InteleTravel, as leading the way in the change travel marketplace.

“The Global Stays programme will feature all 4 rate codes (WYN, WYZ for Advantage and HFH/EZR for Hickory Global Partners,” Dane said.