Advantage and Hickory Global Partners create accommodation network

The Advantage Travel Partnership has launched a joint venture with corporate travel consortium Hickory Global Partners to create a new accommodation network.

Global Stays will launch in 2025 and offer more than 60,000 properties worldwide and more than one million serviced apartments.

The combined accommodation network will be available to more than 1,900 travel management companies (TMCs), corporate travel departments and Corporate Direct, across 158 countries around the world, with a total accommodation spend of $2.9 billion.

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Advantage said the network will provide “significantly enhanced opportunities to the collective members of both organisations and will significantly broaden their combined accommodation offerings”, as well as “offer suppliers more reach though combined marketing resources and aligned operational efficiencies”.

The Hickory Global Partners Hotel Programme currently provides access to 43,000 hotel properties to 1,500 member locations, including TMCs, corporate travel departments and corporations in 71 countries and 1,081 cities.

Hickory, which was acquired by InteleTravel in 2023, also delivers access to airline, and ground transportation supplier solutions across its full spectrum of members.

John Hobbs Hurrell, head of Advantage Global Network, said the partnership will “create a truly global and robust accommodation programme with a vastly increased scale”.

“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,” he said.

“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.

“This will greatly enhance the number of hotels that can be offered to our combined memberships and create further revenue and marketing opportunities for hotel and supplier partners.”

Chris Dane, president of Hickory Global Partners, said the firm “couldn’t be more pleased with the deepening of the relationship between Advantage and Hickory”.