A bedbank is a wholesale accommodation supplier: it holds contracts and connections with many hotels and sells those rooms to travel businesses such as tour operators, travel agencies and online travel agencies (OTAs), usually at net rates. The travel business adds its own markup and sells the room to its customer, while the bedbank confirms the booking against its own inventory.
The term is also written bed bank, and a bedbank is sometimes simply called a hotel wholesaler. Bedbanks sell to the trade, not to the public: a traveler who books a hotel on an agency's website usually never learns that the room came from a bedbank, because the agency sells it under its own name and price.
Where bedbanks get their rooms
A bedbank is only as useful as the inventory it can offer, and that inventory comes from a few kinds of source.
- Contracts with hotels. The bedbank negotiates net rates with a hotel or hotel group, sometimes with an allotment: a set number of rooms held for it on given dates. Rooms still unsold at the release period, a cut-off before arrival, go back to the hotel.
- Live connections. Instead of fixed allotments, many hotels share their rates and availability with bedbanks through their own systems or a channel manager, so the bedbank sells what is actually free at that moment.
- Other suppliers. Part of a bedbank's inventory can come from other wholesalers or regional suppliers, so the same room may pass through more than one intermediary before it reaches an agency.
Along with rooms and rates, the bedbank supplies content for each hotel: its name, description, photos, room names and facilities. That content is the bedbank's own version, and it often differs from what the hotel or another supplier sends for the same property.
Global and regional bedbanks
The main difference between bedbanks is coverage. A global bedbank covers hotels in many countries and sells to travel businesses in many source markets. Its strength is breadth: one agreement and one connection can cover a large number of destinations at once.
A regional bedbank concentrates on one country or region. It often works closely with local hotels and can carry smaller properties, local rates or allotments that a global bedbank does not offer. Many agencies use both: a global bedbank for reach, and a regional one in the destinations they sell most.
Neither type is better in general. The right choice depends on where your customers travel, which markets you sell from, and whether the bedbank's rates are valid for those markets.
How an agency connects to a bedbank
Bedbanks sell only to travel businesses, so opening an account usually starts with a commercial agreement and proof that you are one. From there, agencies work with a bedbank in one of two ways, or both.
An online partner portal
The bedbank gives your team a login to its booking website. You search by destination and dates, see net rates and book by hand. It takes no technical work and suits agencies that book bedbank rooms occasionally or one customer at a time.
An API or XML connection
Your booking system or website connects to the bedbank's system and searches its inventory automatically, so bedbank hotels can appear next to your other products. Bedbanks usually ask for a test and certification phase before a connection goes live, and many limit how many searches you can run for each booking you make.
How a booking is confirmed
Whichever route you use, a booking follows the same basic sequence:
- You search, and the bedbank returns available rooms with their current net rates and conditions.
- Before you book, price and availability are checked again, because either can change between search and booking.
- You book, and the bedbank confirms the reservation against its own inventory and returns a booking reference.
- The bedbank, or the supplier behind it, passes the reservation on to the hotel.
Your customer deals with you, and you deal with the bedbank. If a hotel cannot honor a booking, the problem is settled between you and the bedbank, under the bedbank's terms.
How bedbank pricing works
Bedbank prices are usually net rates. The bedbank quotes what you pay, you add your markup, and your customer sees the resulting selling price. On a net rate of 100 EUR, a 15 percent markup gives a selling price of 115 EUR. Measured against that selling price, the 15 EUR is a 13.04 percent margin, a difference the B2B guide explains.
Several other factors shape the price you can actually sell at:
- Prices move. Many bedbank rates follow the hotel's live pricing, so the rate at booking can differ from the one your customer saw earlier.
- Market restrictions. Some rates are valid only for bookings from certain source markets, or only when the room is sold as part of a package rather than on its own.
- Minimum prices. Hotels often expect their rooms not to be advertised to the public below their own price, and a bedbank contract can pass that condition on to you.
- Currency. The bedbank may quote in one currency while you sell in another, which makes the exchange rate part of your price.
- Taxes and fees. Check which taxes the net rate includes and which fees the guest pays at the hotel.
Bedbank, direct contract or channel manager?
An agency can get the same hotel in three different ways. The table compares them on the points that shape daily work.
| Question | Direct hotel contract | Channel manager connection | Bedbank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who do you sign with? | The hotel or hotel group | The hotel, with the channel manager providing the connection | The bedbank, for many hotels at once |
| Who owns the inventory and rates? | The hotel, on the terms agreed with you | The hotel, while the channel manager only carries its rates and availability | The bedbank, under its own agreements with hotels and suppliers |
| How do prices arrive? | In the contract, often as a rate spreadsheet you load | As live updates whenever the hotel changes a rate or closes a date | Through the bedbank's portal or connection, usually as live net rates |
| Who confirms bookings? | The hotel, or you from an allotment the hotel holds for you | The hotel, through its own systems | The bedbank, against its own inventory |
| Whose cancellation terms apply? | Those in your contract with the hotel | The hotel's terms for the rate you sell | The bedbank's terms, which can differ from the hotel's own |
| Which pricing model? | Net rate or commissionable rate | Whatever you agreed with the hotel | Net rate |
Many agencies combine all three: direct contracts where they sell the most, channel manager connections for hotels that already use one, and bedbanks to fill the gaps.
Benefits and trade-offs
What a bedbank gives you
- Breadth without contracting each hotel. One agreement opens many hotels in many destinations, so you can sell a new city without negotiating with its hotels one by one.
- Speed. You can add a destination quickly, or answer a customer who asks for a hotel you have never contracted.
- Cover when direct supply runs out. When your own allotment at a hotel is sold out, a bedbank may still have rooms there.
- Less commitment. Live bedbank rates usually do not require you to buy or hold rooms in advance.
What to watch for
- Near-duplicate listings. The same hotel can arrive from a bedbank, a direct contract and a second bedbank, each with a slightly different hotel name and different room names. Until they are mapped to one record, your team compares the wrong prices and your customers see the same hotel twice.
- The bedbank contract governs the booking. Cancellation deadlines, liability when something goes wrong, and when and how you pay all follow your contract with the bedbank, not the hotel's own terms.
- Rate restrictions by market. A rate that is valid only for certain source markets cannot be offered to every customer or partner you have.
- Less room to negotiate. Another company's margin sits inside the net rate, and you have no direct relationship with the hotel when you need an exception.
What to check before connecting
A short checklist saves a lot of rework once a connection is live.
- Coverage. Does the bedbank offer the destinations and hotel types you sell, and how many of those hotels do you already get from other sources?
- Valid markets. Which source markets are its rates valid for, and are some rates package-only?
- Cancellation terms. How do its deadlines compare with the terms you give your own customers and partners?
- Payment. When do you pay, in which currency, and what happens to a payment when a booking is canceled?
- Confirmation. How are bookings confirmed, what reference does the hotel receive, and who handles a problem at check-in?
- Connection. Is it a portal, an API or both, what does certification involve, and which search limits apply?
- Content and codes. How good are the descriptions and photos, and how will its hotel and room codes be matched to your catalog?
How Adrasis handles bedbank supply
In Adrasis Console, bedbank inventory is buyer-side supply. The bedbank exposes its hotel catalog, rates and inventory, and your organization consumes it as the buyer and resells it through its own sales channels. Each bedbank reaches the Console through a connector enabled for your organization.
Search alongside your own catalog
Search can include bedbank supply next to the hotels in your own catalog, and the results show which is which, so your team can decide what to sell. You do not review a bedbank's catalog the way you review your own: the bedbank remains the system of record for those properties.
Markup and routing for your channels
Bedbank pricing is net rate plus your markup. The pricing engine knows the connector is a bedbank and applies net-rate pricing automatically, so you do not choose between net and commission for each connected hotel. You decide how bedbank supply appears in your own sales channels: how it is priced, whether it is blended with your other supply, and which markets it is routed to. If the bedbank quotes in EUR and your organization works in TRY, the conversion runs in the same engine, and every conversion is recorded.
Bookings on their own surface
Bookings placed against bedbank inventory are handled on a separate buyer-side surface, not in the booking inbox for properties you manage directly. Their reconciliation, cancellation and settlement follow the bedbank contract rather than the defaults you use for directly managed properties, which is why the two are kept apart.
One hotel, one record
When the same hotel reaches you from more than one source, mapping reconciles the sources into one property record. Deluxe Sea View from one supplier and Superior Sea-Facing Double from another can become one room, so your channels show one listing, and each value keeps a note of the source it came from.
To see how bedbank supply fits the rest of an agency's work, read travel agency software. To open your supply to partner agencies and API clients, see B2B distribution and API.