Travel Tech Talks – interview with Georgios Marsellos, Founder & CEO Cosmobeds

Claudia Bortas, the Head of the Marketing department at wbe.travel, invited the Founder & CEO of Cosmobeds for an open discussion about the newly launched brand during pandemic times, the company’s profile and particularities, future plans and previous experience in the travel sector. What came out is a great interview and an honest opinion of the founder of what promises to be a leading Destination Management Company in the industry.

Claudia – wbe.travel: Georgios, please share some of your career highlights with us.

Georgios – Cosmobeds:  I am happy to say that I had the chance to work for the largest brands in the travel industry. Specifically, I have worked for Tourico Holidays UK (Hotelbeds group), JacTravel UK (WebBeds Group), set up HotesPro in Dubai, looking after the MEAPAC, Greece, Cyprus and Malta region. My latest role in the last 5 years included the setup and launch of W2M World to Meet as a start-up in MEAPAC, Greece, Cyprus & Malta region. During the last 15 years, I managed with my teams a portfolio of all major wholesale clients in these markets and successfully established the companies I worked for, in the mentioned regions.

Claudia – wbe.travel: Why launch a brand new venture in what is arguable, the hardest period that the travel industry has ever faced?

Georgios – Cosmobeds:  To be very honest, the big brands are struggling and they are adapting slowly to the new travel reality. They simply don’t have the flexibility which a young brand can have. From the manpower to the service-focused cultured, when all of them lost a large portion of the staff, I felt that a lot of potential was available in the market for a quarter of the price. There are tens of thousands of gifted people that have huge know-how and that were laid off due to budgeting decisions, taken by accountants, rather than Managers. I believe that it’s a unique opportunity to capitalize on this human personnel and show our clients all their familiar faces under a fresh new brand that they can trust from day 1. They will simply work with the people that have been close to them for 10-20 years. It just makes sense.

At the same time, it was a great opportunity for us to establish a new DMC specialist company and distribute globally unique and focused travel products. Cosmobeds Headquarters are in Dubai, UAE and also operating from our Athens, Greece office, Madrid, Spain and other home office regions such as Istanbul Turkey or Rio De Janeiro in Brazil. We recently launched Cosmobeds Platinum which is a company dedicated to VIP clients offering luxury and exclusive travel products (yachts, villas, private jets, helicopter hires, chauffeur-driven cars and many more) in Greece, all serviced from our Athens office.

Claudia – wbe.travel: What services make Cosmobeds special? And what are you planning on selling?

Georgios – Cosmobeds: We know the market and we know the clients, so our bottom line is simple. Sell the most in-demand product for the clients that book the most. It sounds simple, but without having a combined experience of a few hundreds of years in the travel space, it would be hard to consider it an effortless task. Now we reached a level of personal maturity that allows us to understand how the business flows and focus on the 10% of clients that bring 90% of the business. We are accommodation first with more than 5,000 direct hotel contracts in Greece (I am Greek obviously) Italy & Cyprus and more than 2000 villas and apartments with instant pricing & availability. Now we are adding more inventory in the Balkan and European cities region. We are targeting a quality approach, rather than having hundreds of thousands of properties that crowd out up XML feed and hardly ever get booked.

Claudia – wbe.travel: Why choose the wbe.travel system to create this new venture? We appreciate honesty and transparency.

Georgios – Cosmobeds: In my line of business I had to interact with all the tech houses. To be honest, there are hundreds out of there and out of them, just a few are quite recommendable. wbe.travel has always been in my top 3 proposals’ lists for people who are looking to buy systems in the travel tech space. What set you over the top was the fact that we are focusing on an XML business, and in this space, there are considerably fewer players available with a proven and working technology. For us, just having a nice user interface where users can log in wasn’t enough. So when we added the XML/JSON Out component and the crazy good value for money that your team provides, wbe.travel was the only player on the final list and the decision was very obvious to take.

Claudia – wbe.travel: And as the last question, what are your plans for 2021 and beyond?

Georgios – Cosmobeds: We are currently working on 2 “fronts”. On one side, our contracting team is getting more and more own inventory in the platform and on the other, we are actively pursuing IT houses and large corporate customers to plug in our best rates. We know that the big brands will get a portion of the business and it’s only normal to happen like this. We want to present ourselves as a specialist in our area and get at least 10%-20% of our target client’s business for our top destinations. At the way the current feedback is coming, we are very confident in 2021’s business and we have a very strong financial backup to help us achieve our goals for 2021 and beyond.

Claudia – wbe.travel: Thank you so much for your time and for the great info.

Georgios – Cosmobeds: With pleasure.

About Cosmobeds

After building a robust booking system for the fresh company, wbe.travel has integrated via the API XML and has added in the Premium PLUS program the brand new Destination Management Company – Cosmobeds. The installation of Cosmobeds API comes with a zero cost attached and no monthly fees for the time of the connectivity.

Cosmobeds offers easy access to their worldwide portfolio via their B2B platform, available for Tour Operators, Bed Banks, Travel Agents, Wholesalers and OTAs worldwide. Cosmobeds’ portfolio goes up to more than 10.000 worldwide directly contracted properties covering all accommodation types such as Hotels, Resorts, Apartments, Villas.

If you would like to know more about Cosmobeds or simply want to integrate them into your booking system, send us an e-mail at sales@wbe.travel.