CASE STUDY
Reaching global markets: how Transhotel built a
platform for worldwide growth
ASHEET
TRANSHOTEL
At a Glance
COMPANY: Transhotel
“Asia is becoming very important to us, and we needed to be able to
count on a company that could support us in new countries there as we
set up new strategies and plans to consolidate our international
activities.”
- Francisco Javier Diéguez, Architecture and Infrastructure Manager of
Transhotel
FOUNDED: 1994
HEADQUARTERS: Madrid (Spain)
AUDIENCE: Travel agencies
INDUSTRY: Global travel service provider
WEBSITE: www.transhotel.com
SERVICES: Hotels portfolio and travel
service platform
CDNetworks SERVICES:
Dynamic
Web Acceleration
Key Results
Accelerated dynamic website content to
enhance service for existing European and
US customer base
Enabled expansion into Asia and other
emerging markets including Russia, Latin
America and India
Delivered cost savings of over 50% over the
previous CDN service supplier
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Transhotel is a Spanish global travel services provider founded in 1994. From its outset
Transhotel has recognised that to become a highly competitive and profitable company
offering a high level of service, there would be a continuous need for a reliable and
responsive technology platform that allows close collaboration between the company
and its clients.
The Challenge
The company was finding that an ever expanding client base and using the internet as its
main way of conducting business would mean an increased risk of getting content to the
right places in an expedient manner. Transhotel wanted to ensure that the business
could maintain and build on its growth.
Transhotel created a business group made up of companies exclusively concerned with
the world tourist industry. It has branches in 24 countries all over the world, essentially
in Europe and the Americas but also in Asia, where it now has a presence and in India,
Singapore and China.
The Transhotel group serves 78,800 travel agency customers worldwide, providing a
portfolio of over 60,000 hotels and tourist services in 147 countries via multiple online
websites, with international revenues growing steadily year on year. 94% of Transhotel’s
business activity is carried out through the TOR System Advanced platform that was
developed by the company and launched in 2008. Currently over 50,000 of Transhotel
travel agency customers from all over the world use the platform daily and make on
average 3.4 million enquiries on the availability of services. In 2011 the platform allowed
the booking of over 3.5million overnight stays.
Another important element of Transhotel’s business and technology approach is to
ensure that its systems can be easily integrated with other established tools in the
sector, such as the Amadeus GDS (Global Distribution System) and the CETS (Central
European Touristic Solution). This allows travel agents connected to those systems to
use Transhotel’s products and services.
“We just could not allow our service to be hampered by speed or latency problems; we
wanted to maintain our high levels of service and ensure that we didn’t put our business
and that of our clients at risk. Websites taking too long to load or downloads being slow
just aren’t an option with a global travel firm like ours,” says Francisco Javier Diéguez,
Architecture and Infrastructure Manager of Transhotel.
In 2007 after consulting with telecoms service providers, it was clear that Transhotel
needed to overcome these issues by deploying web acceleration services from a well
known and reputable supplier. This implementation was essential if the e-commerce
channel and the TOR System Advanced on-line booking platform were to be
consolidated.
Key Objectives
“Our decision to enter the Asian market, especially China, forced us to rethink our
supplier policy as we didn’t want to take chances in emerging markets, where we were
looking to expand,” says Diéguez. “Asia is becoming very important to us, and we
needed to be able to count on a company that could support us in new countries there
as we set up new strategies and plans to strengthen our international activities, without
this implying a loss of service and quality in European and American markets where
most of our current clients are located.”
“We chose CDNetworks because of its reputation of being able to get into distant and
developing markets. Given its expertise of the Asian market and in particular China,
the decision to work with them was an easy one. In addition, their experience of
powering global e-commerce and travel websites also made this a clear choice,” says
Diéguez.
The availability of PoPs (Points of Presence) of CDNetworks in these countries, and its
position as sole global supplier with specialist knowledge of China meant Diéguez and
his team could count on a trusted partner. CDNetworks’ Dynamic Web Acceleration
services would help the company service its growing customer base, expand into new
markets and provide the kind of web performance that would keep its clients happy
regardless of geographic location.
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Cutting Expenses
Transhotel was pleasantly surprised with CDNetworks’ ability to provide a flexible global
service at a competitive price point. “Rethinking the supplier strategy also made us
analyse all costs of the overall project in detail,” says Diéguez. “The flexibility of the
CDNetworks approach has allowed us to reach our goals at a very reasonable cost. The
migration to CDNetworks has given us a saving of 50% compared with our previous
supplier.”
Fast and Easy Migration: Immediate Service
The process of migration from one company to another can pose risks, especially when
e-commerce is the main source of a business’s income. “The implementation of
CDNetworks’ solutions was quite transparent and simple, and we did it ourselves,” said
Diéguez. “Our knowledge of the previous solution and our experience meant that in
only four weeks the CDNetworks service was in full operation and was working exactly
as we needed. We have not had any disruption to our service and we are much better
prepared for the future, growing our business without concern that web performance
will put it at risk.”
Improving User Experience
Currently almost all the corporate services of Transhotel are supported by CDNetworks.
The main website www.transhotel.com has a daily turnover of over 50,000 operations,
most of which are room availability enquiries. 90% of these operations are served on
the end-user’s computer in less than 5 seconds. Thanks to the CDNetworks Dynamic
Web Acceleration solution the demand for speedy and uninterrupted access to the
applications and websites is met, which reduces the time and transfer data necessary to
complete a website request, thus accelerating performance and improving the end
user’s experience.
In an average day, Transhotel serves some 5 million http hits, 1.4 million web pages, and
transfers a volume of information of some 80 Gigabytes. Thanks to the content
acceleration solution, 50% is cached and served from the edge of CDNetworks without
the Transhotel servers having to intervene in any way.
“The availability of the CDNetworks solution is highly optimal and gets the uptime of our
applications to 99.99%,” Diéguez adds.
There is a good communication channel between CDNetworks and Transhotel, for
example keeping Transhotel informed when there is platform maintenance, the client is
notified promptly in case intervention is required in any way. “They are very meticulous
and collaborate closely with us to ensure that no kind of incident occurs,” said Diéguez.
CDNetworks | 3
About Grupo Transhotel
CDNetworks
Global Offices
US
441 W. Trimble Road
San Jose, CA 95131
+1 408 228 3700
EMEA
Juxon House
100 St Paul’s Churchyard
London, EC4M 8BU
+44 203 514 7501
Korea
Handong Bldg. 2F,828-7
Yeoksam-Dong, Gangnam-Gu
135-935 Seoul
+82 2 3441 0400
Japan
Nittochi Nishi-shinjuku Building
8th Floor, 6-10-1, Nishishinjuku,
Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 160-0023
+81 3 5909 3369
China
Room No.A-1502,
Keijidalou, 900 Yi shan Road, Shanghai
+ 021-54234802
info@cdnetworks.com
www.cdnetworks.com
© CDNetworks.
All rights reserved.
Features and specifications
subject to change without notice.
CDNetworks | 4
Transhotel is a global travel service provider based in Madrid (Spain). Grupo Transhotel
consists of 6 brands related to the tourism sector. The company has more than 700
professionals working towards the main goal of offering its portfolio of more than
60,000 hotels and all types of service throughout the world for 78,800 travel agencies
worldwide.
It provides a new concept in Service and always with the latest technology, offering the
best solutions for professionals within the tourism sector.
All of the Grupo’s brands offer real solutions to professionals in the tourism industry in
their different areas of activity.
For more information on Grupo Transhotel visit http://www.transhotel.com.
About CDNetworks
CDNetworks enables Global Cloud Acceleration. Our mission is to transform the
Internet into a secure, reliable, scaleable and high performing Application Delivery
Network. CDNetworks’ unique position as the only multinational CDN with expertise
and infrastructure in China, Russia and other emerging markets, enables us to be
trusted partners in local markets, while serving as foremost experts on extending into
global markets. Accelerating more than 17,500 global websites and cloud services over
our 140 PoPs, CDNetworks serves our e-business customers across industries like
finance, travel, eCommerce, learning management, high tech, manufacturing and
media. CDNetworks has been serving our enterprise customers for more than 13 years,
and has offices in the U.S., Korea, China, Japan, and the UK. For more information,
please visit: http://www.cdnetworks.com.