HBX’s Andrew Boocock on the art of selling travel in an evolving industry

Sales and marketing are a critical sector for any business, but most especially for the travel, tourism, and hospitality industries, given the post-pandemic boom in all three.

At the recently concluded MarketHub 2025 summit held in Macau by the HBX Group, Group vice-president for sales in the Middle East and the Asia Pacific (MEAPAC) Andrew Boocock was part of a panel that discussed trends in these evolving sectors.

Travel Daily Media’s Gary Marshall caught up with Boocock to hear more of his relevant insights.

Travel Daily Media (TDM)   You’ve attracted a very high level of people, quality- and quantity-wise, this year; how many people are currently here?

Andrew Boocock (AB)  I think, in total, we’re about 350 in all. 

For us it’s the first time that the MEAPAC conference was the first of the market hubs that we run; last time, when we had it in Bangkok, it was the last event of the year.

This year, we’ve switched it around, and it’s exciting for us to be leading the way at an exciting period in the business.

TDM     I want to get down to your role within the business itself; what is your mandate per se and what sort of customers are you trying to attract?

AB     We focus on anybody that’s selling travel from a leisure perspective: whether that’s your OTA businesses, partners that sit in between that OTA and retail agent model, airline partners, we look at both the obvious as well as any of the non-traditional travel markets as well. 

We look at things like subscription groups and corporate businesses that use travel as part of their ecosystem.

Things like credit cards and affiliate companies are also a focus point for us. 

Beyond that, we touched on airlines through our white label technology. 

Obviously, we do have retail agents, which is what we manage for our retail team. 

So yeah, for my own team really within APAC, it’s a very dynamic and online market.

Our focus is on those markets for customers that operate in that particular space.

Dealing with the brick and mortar scene

TDM     Can you give us some examples of the types of clients from a brick and mortar point of view that would actually use your services?

AB     Look at the Australian market, for example: someone like Flight Centre would be an example of a brick and mortar travel agency who still has quite a significant presence in the market, and Hello World is another example of that in the Australian market. 

When you expand outside of Australia, Japan still is a fairly traditional market in that sense so you look at players like HIS and JTB, for example, as two major traditional brick and mortar style businesses that still have people that will go in and purchase packages and they produce brochures and those sorts of things, which is becoming increasingly rare in this region. 

Beyond that, I think people are becoming more and more interactive when it comes to looking online for different products, and they’ll use that as their source of inspiration.

Then again, you still have people that will go and want the comfort and the ability to go and talk to a travel agent or go and talk to somebody who can physically book a hotel or a holiday for them and have the assurance and the comfort that it’s all been sorted for them.

Strategic partnerships

TDM     From what I believe, there’s a lot of infantry as such within the system for the agents to book, ranging from car hire, I believe insurance as well?

AB     We launched a partnership with Battleface last year as well from an insurance perspective. 

But, historically, Hotelbeds was known for our accommodation, which remains our bread and butter.

In recent years, though, we’ve really expanded that out. 

We have transfers, which is incredibly important for us and which we offer globally. 

There’s very few markets where we don’t have an exceptional presence. 

Car hire through CARNECT is another really important part of our business. 

People love to self-drive and a car hire service is something that allows them to do that. Activities are also part of what people want from their holiday, and we just had a conversation before the presentations about how the activities and experiences market represents $1 trillion of the total global market.

These are things like theme parks, coach tours, all these different types of experiences that people want to have and why they go on holidays; that’s also something that we offer.

A foray into fintech and more

AB     Fintech products are something that we’ve continued to expand into, particularly when you look at some of the digital payment solutions and options that are available in the market. 

So, yes: we’ve gone beyond just accommodation now and our HPX ecosystem continues to grow and evolve.

TDM     So if somebody wants to connect with you and your particular division, how do they get that going?

AB     They can go straight onto the HPX website, raise a request, explain a little bit about their business model, and they’ll be directed into the right team that can start onboarding them and connect them to us as quickly as they can.

With regard to onboarding, it’s a process of how long typically depends on the business, you know If a client’s looking for web access It’s literally a matter of giving them credentials and away they go. 

They can log on to the system if they’re looking at something like an API or a white label solution that generally takes a little bit longer.

Then again, depending on the amount of resources that the client has, it can be a matter of days to a couple of weeks. 

It really just depends on how much time and resources that they’ve got, but there’s a team there ready to go and to start that conversation as quickly as possible.

About Andrew Boocock

Currently based in Australia, Boocock stepped into the role of vice-president for MEAPAC sales in November 2024.

In this role, he leads sales teams across the Middle East, Asia Pacific, and Australia.

As such, his primary focus is on strengthening HBX Group’s market position and fostering growth in these strategic regions.