Weston, FL, March 12, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Monaker Group (NASDAQ: MKGI), a travel and technology company focused on the alternative lodging rental (ALR) market, today said it has introduced major new features on its proprietary online travel site, NextTrip.com, which offers retail consumers instant booking of alternative lodging combined with other major travel services.
New and enhanced features available to travelers today include:
· ALR search results returned alongside traditional lodging for total option convenience.
· Custom bundling of lodging, air, car rental and activities affords consumers significant exclusive savings.
· Dynamic, point-and-click map searches to make finding the ideal location faster and easier.
· “Share-and-Build” travel itineraries, allowing family, friends or colleagues to collaborate in travel planning.
· Enhanced restaurant, rail and other ground transportation access for more convenient and complete travel planning.
· Multiple destination search and booking capabilities
NextTrip now allows travelers to bundle vacation packages with the added benefit of instantly-bookable private vacation homes, villas, chalets, apartments, condos and castles in combination with other major travel services — from conventional lodging and airlines to car rentals and tour packages.
In addition to instantly-bookable properties from Monaker’s exclusive global ALR inventory, the site features more than 400,000 hotels, 400 airlines, all major car rental companies, restaurants, rail and taxi, and 10,000+ tourist activities.
Most of NextTrip’s ALR properties are available in prime locations in Europe, Asia and South America, while Monaker continues to add new ALR property locations in anticipation of customer demand. This includes additional popular North American and Caribbean destinations.
“The enhanced NextTrip.com platform demonstrates how Monaker has solved one of the biggest pain-points in the travel industry—lack of access to instant booking of ALR that can be instantly combined with other associated travel reservations,” said Monaker CEO, Bill Kerby. “So, if you search and find a vacation rental you like, and then click ‘book now’, you’ve got it. No waiting minutes, hours or more to hear back from a vacation property owner while your other reservations are lost. You can immediately go ahead and book your flight, car or tour packages at the same time as your ALR, all on the same site, and without hesitation.”
NextTrip Vacation Homes Rentals is powered by the Monaker Booking Engine (MBE), a new cloud-based technology platform that delivers ALR reservations which can be confirmed instantly. MBE delivers Monaker’s global ALR inventory via a flexible application program interface (API) that allows custom integration into existing reservation systems. Mr. Kerby added, “Over the next several weeks, we expect a significant increase in available ALR on NextTrip once all available inventories are loaded onto the platform.”
Given the long-standing industry need for instant booking ALR reservations, several leading travel service wholesalers, retailers and travel agents are currently working to integrate the company’s MBE technology with their vacation and travel package distribution channels.
Coming this summer, Monaker plans to further enhance NextTrip with specialized artificial intelligence capabilities that will enable even easier planning for business, group, and family travel.
With NextTrip and MBE, Monaker looks to take advantage of the growing demand for alternative lodging and the strong growth in digital travel sales. The ALR industry is expected to grow at more than 7% CAGR to $194 billion by 2021, according to Technavio, making it one of the fastest growing sectors of the travel industry. Meanwhile, eMarketer reports that worldwide digital travel sales are expected to climb at a 9.7% CAGR to top $817 billion by 2020.
About Monaker
Monaker Group is a technology-driven travel company focused on delivering innovation to the alternative lodging rental (ALR) market. The Monaker Booking Engine (MBE) delivers instant booking of more than one million vacation rental homes, villas, chalets, apartments, condos, resort residences and castles. MBE offers travel distributors and agencies an industry-first: a customizable, instant-booking platform for alternative lodging.
Monaker's NextTrip.com website, powered by MBE, is the first to offer significant instantly bookable ALR products along with mainstream travel products and services all on a single site. NextTrip also features rich content and capabilities that enhance the booking experience and assist in the search, decision and buying process for both individuals and groups. For more information, visit www.monakergroup.com.
Important Cautions Regarding Forward Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties concerning the plans and expectations of Monaker. These statements are only predictions and actual events or results may differ materially from those described in this press release due to a number of risks and uncertainties, some of which are out of our control. The potential risks and uncertainties include, among others, the expectations of future growth may not be realized. These forward-looking statements are made only as of the date hereof, and Monaker undertakes no obligation to update or revise the forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. All forward-looking statements are expressly qualified in their entirety by the “Risk Factors” and other cautionary statements included in Monaker’s annual, quarterly and special reports, proxy statements and other public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), including, but not limited to, the company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the period ended February 28, 2017, which has been filed with the SEC and is available at www.sec.gov.