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Two major bedbanks, two very different maps of strength. TBO is the accommodation wholesaler built around India, Asia and the Gulf; Hotelbeds is the European and Mediterranean heavyweight with direct chain contracts. Which one fits your OTA comes down to where your travellers actually book — here is the honest breakdown.
“TBO or Hotelbeds?” is a question that usually has a geography answer, not an inventory one. Both are respected bedbanks. But TBO grew up serving India, Asia and the Gulf, while Hotelbeds built its dominance across Europe and the Mediterranean — and that history shapes which one will actually fill your search results with bookable rates.
TBO Holidays is India’s largest accommodation wholesaler, and the TBO hotel API connects platforms to 1M+ properties with particular depth in India, Southeast Asia, the Maldives, Sri Lanka and the GCC. Hotelbeds, part of HBX Group, is a direct bedbank with 300K+ largely directly contracted hotels and strong chain relationships across Europe and the Americas. The two barely compete on the same turf — which is exactly why choosing between them starts with your map, not their numbers.
Both are net-rate bedbanks, but their DNA differs. Hotelbeds is a direct-contracting bedbank — through HBX Group and the acquisitions of Tourico Holidays and GTA, it holds direct relationships with hotels and major chains including IHG, Hilton, Sheraton and Hyatt, as documented in AltexSoft’s hands-on Hotelbeds review. Its strength is depth of owned, directly contracted inventory in its core regions.
TBO Holidays is a wholesaler built on regional partnerships. Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Dubai, TBO partners with 60+ accommodation suppliers and directly contracts key properties, reaching 1M+ properties with unusually deep coverage of India, Southeast Asia and the Gulf. It is natively connected to regional OTA channels like MakeMyTrip, and its commercial model — B2B net rates with credit-based settlement — mirrors how agents across the subcontinent and MENA already work. Where Hotelbeds optimises for European directly contracted depth, TBO optimises for Eastern regional reach and agent-friendly terms.
TBO’s 1M+ property count is larger than Hotelbeds’ 300K+, but as always the composition matters more than the total. TBO reaches that figure through a mix of direct contracts and 60+ supplier partnerships, with the weight of that inventory concentrated in Asia, the subcontinent and the Gulf. Hotelbeds’ 300K+ hotels across 195+ countries are largely directly contracted and concentrated in Europe, the Mediterranean and the Americas — AltexSoft’s breakdown puts roughly 130,000 in Europe alone.
So the honest comparison is not “1M beats 300K.” It is “where is that inventory, and does it match your travellers?” A platform selling Dubai, Delhi and Bangkok will find far more bookable rates through TBO; one selling Barcelona, Cancún and the Canaries will find them through Hotelbeds. Raw counts also say nothing about overlap — the moment you run both, the same hotel arrives under two different IDs, which is the operational cost the free report below breaks down in full.
This is where the decision is really made. TBO leads across India, Southeast Asia, the Maldives, Sri Lanka and the Gulf Cooperation Council, with growing depth in the Middle East, North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. For any OTA whose travellers book into or out of these markets, TBO reaches directly contracted regional inventory — including 5-star properties in Dubai and key Asian hubs — that Western bedbanks carry thinly if at all.
Hotelbeds leads across Europe, the Mediterranean, Latin America and global chains. Spain, the Balearics, the Canaries and Mediterranean leisure destinations are its heartland, and its direct chain contracts make it reliable for brand-name city and resort inventory worldwide. The pattern is almost a clean split: TBO owns the East, Hotelbeds owns the West. If your business has a single dominant region, that alone usually decides the supplier. If you serve both East and West — which many growing OTAs do — you are really looking at running both.
Both are net-rate suppliers — you receive wholesale prices and set your own markup, keeping full margin control while carrying the working capital that net rates require. The difference is in settlement style. TBO operates a B2B net-rate model with credit-based settlement, a structure long familiar to travel agents across India, the subcontinent and MENA, and there is no cost to access its XML content — you pay when you book. Hotelbeds is net-rate with commercial onboarding and monthly settlement cycles, and its most competitive rates are typically tied to volume, which can favour larger platforms. For a smaller or regionally focused OTA, TBO’s credit terms and low barrier to access can be materially easier to start with; for a high-volume European platform, Hotelbeds’ preferred rates reward the scale. Neither removes the net-rate cash-flow trade-off — they simply structure it to suit different kinds of agent.
The technical realities differ in a way that matters for regional platforms. TBO supports both XML and REST — a practical advantage in markets where many existing booking systems still run on XML workflows — and access to its content carries no upfront fee. Hotelbeds’ APItude suite splits into Booking, Content and Cache APIs, uses SHA-256 signature authentication, and requires a formal certification that ends with placing a real advance test booking before go-live; its sandbox is capped at 50 requests per day, so content must be pulled in batches and stored locally. In both cases the recurring commitments are the same: content storage, hotel-ID mapping, deduplication against your other suppliers, and ongoing maintenance as each API changes. Those costs repeat for every supplier you integrate directly — which is exactly what the build-versus-buy math below turns on.
| Dimension | TBO Holidays | Hotelbeds |
|---|---|---|
| Model | Wholesaler, 60+ supplier partners + direct | Direct-contracting bedbank |
| Inventory | 1M+ properties | 300K+ hotels, largely direct-contracted |
| Reach | 100+ countries; HQ Dubai | 195+ countries |
| Regional strength | India, SE Asia, Maldives, Gulf, MENA | Europe, Mediterranean, LATAM, chains |
| Rate model | Net rate, credit-based settlement | Net rate, monthly settlement |
| API type | XML and REST | REST/JSON (APItude) |
| Access cost | No cost to access; pay per booking | Commercial onboarding; volume-tiered rates |
| Best for | India/Asia/Gulf OTAs, agent networks | European/leisure OTAs, chain depth |
Figures reflect each supplier’s current published positioning. Inventory counts combine directly contracted and partner-sourced properties differently by supplier, so treat totals as indicative of scale, not like-for-like.
Let geography lead. Choose TBO if your travellers book India, Southeast Asia, the Maldives, the Gulf or MENA, if you want credit-based settlement and a low barrier to access, or if your existing platform runs on XML — this is the TBO hotel API sweet spot. Choose Hotelbeds if your travellers book Europe, the Mediterranean, Latin America or brand-name chains, and you want deep directly contracted rates in those regions — the Hotelbeds hotel API is built for exactly that. Choose both if you span East and West, because the two inventories complement rather than duplicate each other.
The catch with “both” is operational, and it is real: two integrations, two settlement models, two content pipelines, two maintenance burdens, and the deduplication of the same hotel arriving from both feeds under different IDs. That is the point where an aggregator becomes the cheaper path rather than a convenience — one integration reaches both suppliers (and 100+ others), with duplicate listings resolved by a dedicated mapping partner so the same hotel shows once, best rate winning.
East and West inventory — plus 100+ more suppliers — live in days, deduplicated, on one normalised API.
Explore the Universal Hotel API →Related reading: Hotelbeds vs RateHawk · The best hotel API providers in 2026
By property count, yes — TBO lists 1M+ properties against Hotelbeds’ 300K+. But the two totals are weighted toward different regions and combine direct and partner inventory differently, so the number alone is misleading. TBO’s scale is concentrated in India, Asia and the Gulf; Hotelbeds’ is concentrated in Europe, the Mediterranean and the Americas. The more useful question is which supplier is bigger in your markets, not overall.
TBO Holidays is India’s largest accommodation wholesaler, strongest across India, Southeast Asia, the Maldives and the Gulf, with credit-based settlement and both XML and REST APIs. Hotelbeds is a direct-contracting bedbank strongest in Europe, the Mediterranean and Latin America, with deep chain relationships and a REST APItude suite. In short, TBO owns the East and Hotelbeds owns the West, and their commercial terms suit different kinds of agent.
For an OTA focused on India, Southeast Asia and the Gulf, TBO usually leads — it is India’s largest wholesaler, natively connected to regional channels like MakeMyTrip, and its credit-based settlement matches how agents in these markets already operate. Hotelbeds still adds value for Indian OTAs selling European and Mediterranean holidays. Many Indian platforms that sell both outbound Europe and domestic/Asia inventory end up wanting both, reached through a single aggregator.
Both are fundamentally net-rate suppliers: you receive a wholesale price and set your own markup, keeping full margin control but carrying the working capital net rates require. The difference is settlement — TBO uses credit-based settlement familiar to agents across India and MENA and charges no fee to access its content, while Hotelbeds uses commercial onboarding with monthly settlement and volume-tiered preferred rates.
If your travellers span East and West — Asia and the Gulf on one side, Europe and the Americas on the other — then yes, because the two inventories complement rather than overlap, so running both genuinely widens what you can book. The cost of doing so directly is two integrations, two settlement models and the deduplication of overlapping hotels. An aggregator gives you both through one integration with duplicates resolved automatically, which is usually cheaper than maintaining two direct connections.
Reach TBO’s India, Asia and Gulf inventory alongside Hotelbeds and 100+ suppliers through one normalised API — deduplicated, live in days, with the per-supplier build already done.
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