The Illinois Office of Tourism is excited to announce a brand new partnership with Tourism Exchange USA, a B2B one-stop digital marketplace where suppliers (accommodations, tours, attractions) can manage live availability, pricing and bookings across multiple distribution channels.
As international travel continues to strengthen following the pandemic, this collaboration, powered by Brand USA, will help grow visitation across Illinois by extending access to local tourism businesses through popular booking channels like Google, Expedia and TripAdvisor (among others), presenting an incredible opportunity for the state to grow our domestic and international business.
We’re very excited about this opportunity and hope to see many of you take full advantage of the platform once we officially launch.
What is the Tourism Exchange?
The Tourism Exchange platform digitizes and democratizes the product development and distribution landscape, allowing attractions, experiences and accommodations of all sizes to connect their live product inventory to global OTAs and tour operators.
The platform aims to help:
Increase product visibility
Drive visitation
Support sales growth
Boost profitability
Already in use in Australia, Japan and the UK, the platform will create an opportunity for Illinois businesses and destinations to expand their product reach to new customers around the globe.
Across those markets currently using the Tourism Exchange:
more than 100,000 suppliers have been connected
more than $1 billion in tourism bookings have been processed through offline, local and global distribution partners
There are no upfront fees and no risks for suppliers.
Distributors: online travel agents (OTAs), tour operators
Learn more at ILGOV 2024
Nate Huff, President of Tourism Exchange USA, will be running a dedicated breakout session at the Illinois Governor’s Conference on Travel & Tourism. During this session, attendees will get a preview of the Exchange and learn how their destination or business can participate. This session will also include a Q&A segment.
"Our primary function is creating connections between suppliers and distributors — like a match-making service for tourism products. We’re not an online travel agency (OTA), and we’re not trying to provide products directly to consumers. Our goal is to expand the reach and bookability of domestic tourism suppliers globally." - Nate Huff
Specific webinars to cover training on the Tourism Exchange USA platform will be arranged in the coming months.
