HBX Group's new Growth Accelerator lets hotels pay for visibility

You pay twice, with a lower net rate for the dates you pick and a visibility fee HBX won't publish, all to feed the kind of rate most often found below yours on Google

by Markus Busch

Driving the news. HBX Group, the company behind Hotelbeds, launched Growth Accelerator on October 15. It sits in the Partner Portal, and hotels switch it on themselves. HBX says it gives hotels "greater control" over how they grow. It has three parts.

Visibility Campaigns put your hotel in front of travel buyers in the countries you choose. Incentive Booster lets you offer extra discounts on the dates, rooms and rate plans you pick. Market Groups let you bundle countries and make an offer for each bundle.

HBX hasn't published what any of it costs.

Two bills. The first tool is paid placement inside a wholesale marketplace. The second is a lower net rate. In August we reported that Hotelbeds' fix for its own shrinking margin runs through your contract. Now the fix has a button.

A rate built for the package. The net rate was made for tour operators. They fold the room into a holiday price, and the traveler never sees what the room alone costs. Hotelbeds' own announcements list a much wider set of buyers: airline websites, points-redemption programs, loyalty plans, OTAs. Since July, by HBX's count, about 250,000 of its hotels also sit in Sabre's travel marketplace.

Hotelbeds' own release says hotels can choose whether its airline and points-redemption buyers sell their rate across their whole business or only in opaque channels, where the hotel's name stays hidden until after booking.

Where the cheap prices come from. 123Compare.me sells parity-monitoring software and checks more than 6 million Google Hotels searches a month. In the first half of 2026, Super, trivago and Billabook each sold below the hotel's own price in about two of every three searches they appeared in. Their rates, the company says, often come from wholesalers or third parties instead of from the hotel.

On October 13 we opened the Google Maps cards of eight independent hotels. On five of them, the cheapest price belonged to Super.com. At Nossek it asked €224. The hotel's own website, on the same card, asked €256.

The catch. Nothing here traces a single undercut to Hotelbeds. 123Compare doesn't name the wholesalers behind those sellers, and it sells the tools for the problem it measures. trivago's own checkout runs largely on rooms from Expedia, as we have covered, so not every cheap seller runs on wholesale. Super.com's price at Nossek carried Google's asterisk for a customized price, one not every guest is shown. HBX hasn't said which buyers see an Incentive Booster discount, all of them or only some. And Market Groups can narrow where a rate goes.

What it means for hotels. Before you switch on Incentive Booster, call your Hotelbeds account manager. Ask which countries and which kinds of buyers get your rate. Ask whether it can be sold as a room on its own, or only inside a package or an opaque channel.

Then open your hotel on Google Maps. If Super.com or another seller you don't recognize has the cheapest price, ask Hotelbeds whether that seller buys from it.

Booking.com sold below the hotel in 22.6% of the searches 123Compare tracked. Super did it in 71.4%.

Read also: Hotelbeds is squeezed. Its fix runs through your contract.

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