reaching global markets: how transhotel built a platform for worldwide growth

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CDNetworks | 1 CASE STUDY TRANSHOTEL At a Glance COMPANY: 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 Reaching global markets: how Transhotel built a platform for worldwide growth “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 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.

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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.

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Page 1: Reaching global markets: how Transhotel built a platform for worldwide growth

CDNetworks | 1

CASE STUDY

TRANSHOTEL                                                              

At a Glance 

COMPANY: 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 

Reaching global markets: how Transhotel built a platform for worldwide growth

“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 

                                      

                  

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. 

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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.

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CDNetworks | 4

CDNetworks  

Global Offices 

US 

441 W. Trimble Road 

San Jose, CA 95131 

+1 408 228 3700 

EMEA 

16 St Martin’s Le‐Grand 

London, EC1A 4EN 

+44 0 2070963982 

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 

[email protected] 

www.cdnetworks.com 

© CDNetworks.  

All rights reserved. 

Features and specifications subject to change without notice. 

 About Grupo Transhotel 

 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.