HBX’s Paul Anthony speaks about the evolving global hospitality sector

With the return of travel sector numbers to nearly pre-pandemic levels, the global hospitality sector has been growing by leaps and bounds.

HBX Group’s senior vice-president for global sourcing Paul Anthony recently shared his insights on this evolving field in an exclusive interview with Travel Daily Media’s own Gary Marshall at the recently concluded MarketHub 2025 held in Macau.

Travel Daily Media (TDM)     I’ve noticed how far a distance that the HBX Group has come, so I would like to catch up about where you’ve been and where you currently are.

Paul Anthony (PA)      Go back up maybe 20 years ago: we started out as a as a business based in Spain.

We were, at the time, largely leisure-based and we then moved into cities in Europe and a small bit in Latin America; and then we started in the US.

Then, as a result of expansion in Asia, we eventually became a global partner in the B2B space.

That worked very well for us; very, very well, as a matter of fact.

Back then, we had a lot of what we called FIT static contracts and we started moving and down the direction of the way the hotel industry was moving, where that dynamic inventory often made a better performance for a hotel.

We wanted to make sure that we were helping hotels move into that dynamic inventory, and we were very successful at making that happen.

Today, we’re very very comfortable in the position that we are in right now.

On parity and distribution

TDM     I’d say that it was a good move on your part. 

PA     We have had some hiccups along the way.

As you know, hotels are increasingly obsessed around parity and controlling the direction of distribution. 

I think that we probably let ourselves down, and that was the result of a combination of factors, including the fact that we brought three companies together, but we made it work. 

[But I was thinking:] “Let’s help the industry and to make sure that distribution control and parity is what it really needs to be for all of us.”

I think we’ve come a long way since then with those partners that where I think we were sometimes seen as rogue players.

I think it’s helping us build more strategic relationships with our partners

Now, we’ve begun to think: where can we grow together?

Where are their markets whose business they aren’t getting a fair share of, and what can we do together in those markets?

I’m trying to be there with the hotels to actually make both our businesses better and bigger; that’s something important. 

The journey has been a long one, but I think we’re in a really good place at the moment with regard to the development of technology.

HBX Group as an industry intermediary

PA      For us it’s always about being an intermediary: we need to be the ones that can normalise the very different tech stacks that our supply partners have.

How do we make sure we can make sense of that in order to normalise things so that the right product is going to the right type of customer and the right distribution channels.

We are constantly looking at how and what we invest in, so that we can make it the best it can be.

The hospitality industry is hugely fragmented: there are so many players out there. 

Luckily, we know today that the hospitality sector contributes ten percent of the global GDP; that means there are a lot of players involved, and that’s great for the industry.

With so many players, it becomes such a dynamic environment as well.

We want to be the ones that can normalise that environment in a way where suppliers are getting what they need from customers in the right way.

What does global sourcing entail?

TDM   What does your day look like in your line of work?

PA     Obviously, we have our teams with whom we have relationships around the world, from our biggest chain partnerships right down to individual hotels.

We have programmes wherein we invest together in the hotel to make sure we’re pushing them well. 

It’s really about making sure that the teams are all using the right value propositions, educating our hotel partners about what we’re doing and making sure that we find those gaps to be able to make sure we become a better business.

While I’d love to be more involved with some of our negotiations, time doesn’t really allow it. 

I’m involved in some of the largest ones, but it really is about having the right teams with the right value propositions and the right level of consistency.

By doing so, we make sure that we’re delivering according to our promises in a consistent way right the way around the world.

About Paul Anthony

Currently senior vice-president for global sourcing for the HBX Group, a position he has held since October 2024, Paul Anthony was also the director for commercia digitisation for its company Hotelbeds for the better part of three years.

Prior to these, he was Hotelbeds Technology’s director of information technology and strategic projects from 2009 to 2012.