eBay is planning to expand its travel offering by leveraging its partnership with Cultuzz.com, it was revealed at this year's EyeForTravel Distribution Conference in London.

Karim Lankarany, a Senior Manager at eBay, told delegates that selling travel packages on eBay has proved successful in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and is now building momentum in the UK, prompting the auction site to expand its hotel distribution model to include dynamic packaging.

"We expect this to kick off in the UK and further down the road we expect new services to appear on ebay, such as wellness packages, air content and site seeing tours. Lankarany commented.

Hoteliers are able to control inventory on eBay and sell rooms during off-peak periods. Hotel rooms are sold on eBay through trading assistants. The 'hotel vouchers' are typically valid for up to one year, with non-fixed dates, which are subject to availability. Rooms are sold under the sellers name but using the hotel description,

Astron Hotels were the first to sell travel on eBay five years ago with a bid that started at one euro. But it was Marriott's first offering on eBay in 2003, that began a new trend of online travel bidding.

While the auction process is an important driver of sales, eBay is developing a 'buy it now' function, which enables customers pay a set price rather than enter an auction process.

eBay, which currently has 11, 000 shortbreak offers on its German site, is expanding its partnership with Cultuzz, a third party website that uploads content from its 2, 500 partner hotels onto eBay.

"We are working closely with Cultuzz because they enable us to sell hotels online", says Lankarany.

Cultuzz, which grew its profit margin by 81% from $100, 000 in its launch year 2001, to $13.4 mn in 2005 is now developing dynamic packaging and real time connectivity.

Michael Hughes, Director Sales & Marketing International, Cultuzz told BTN: "Our goal is to have 10, 000 hotels by the end of this year. He added, "The EyeForTravel Conference has opened the door to travel wholesalers, airlines, car hire companies and cruise companies."

"A commercial drive from the industry will be the next step on eBay," says Hughes.

In coming months, eBay is planning to roll out new technology with calendar functionality that will enable users to check availability.