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Archives for March 2011

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IHG to launch new booking website for its loyalty programme

InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) is to soon launch a new website, www.priorityclub.com. The company says the site will be rolled out globally by late April; the only online booking site where members get rewarded with Priority Club points for their hotel stays.

The development has emerged as IHG shared that it has worked on a new positioning and refreshed look for its loyalty programme Priority Club Rewards.

The company has taken this step based on findings from its global travel loyalty industry study. The study was initiated to better understand the attitudes and habits of hotel guests. Priority Club Rewards conducted a three-year journey of quantitative and qualitative  research of more than 10,000 frequent travellers, who were enrolled in loyalty programmes from IHG and other hotel companies in North America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

Findings

IHG highlighted that hotel loyalty programme members in every region of the world not only want to earn currency that is valuable and flexible, they also want to maintain absolute control in how they use it.

Among the top trends identified by Priority Club Rewards:

• Hotel loyalty programme points displace airline frequent flyer miles as preferred currency: Airlines’ imposition of fees, decreased reward seat inventory and greater restrictions have weakened consumer trust. Frequent travelers place a higher perceived value on hotel loyalty programme currency as hotel programmes add additional redemption options, including access to airline inventory.

• Business travellers value loyalty more than price: Loyalty programme membership is a stronger predictor of hotel selection than price or location – for frequent guests who stay a minimum of 20 nights per year – regardless of preference for midscale or upscale brands.

• Travellers across North America, Asia Pacific and Europe are equally point currency conscious: The value loyalty points hold as currency – for earning and redeeming – ranked as the highest priority for hotel selection by frequent travelers globally, higher than special perks, privileges or benefits in the hotel.

• Global economy a solid indicator of consumer activity in loyalty programmes: Health of the global economy has an inverse correlation with driving hotel loyalty members to use point redemption options versus stockpiling, given points’ perceived utility as cash. 

In 2010, the company enrolled on average 600,000 guests per month in Priority Club Rewards; it now has more than 56 million members.

While Priority Club Rewards features notable programmes such as: No Point Expiration, No Blackout Dates, the Points & Cash system and access to airline ticket inventory and non-IHG hotel rooms, respectively, through Flights Anywhere and Hotels Anywhere redemption options, IHG will also add several new Priority Club Rewards redemption offerings in 2011.

As part of the new Priority Club Rewards look and feel, introduced are:

• Redesigned Priority Club Rewards membership cards: A refreshed blue color palette with inspirational imagery from destinations around the world
• New website rolling out globally by late April; the only online booking site where members get rewarded with Priority Club points for their hotel stays: www.priorityclub.com
• Custom photography included in member communications, advertising and marketing materials 
• An informative, newly designed member e-statement
• A new Priority Club Rewards logo

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Hotwire.com launches in the UK

US discount travel site Hotwire.com has forayed into the UK market, bringing its discounted hotel `Hot Rates’ to British shores.

The company highlighted that more than 40 percent of hotel rooms are left vacant every night (attributed to STR Global, January 2011 report, UK hotel occupancy at 56.7 percent). It added that Hotwire specialises in selling these rooms for reduced rates of up to 50 percent off.

Clem Bason, president of Hotwire, said, “Customers are looking for new ways to save when booking a holiday or short break. At Hotwire that’s what we do. We work hard every day to bring unsold rooms to consumers at deeply discounted prices ensuring that customers continue to have great travel experiences, they just pay less for them.”

Hotwire has special relationships with over 25,000 leading hotels worldwide. When these hotels have unsold rooms, they use Hotwire to fill them, so consumers get up to 50 percent off standard rates. Travellers wishing to take advantage of Hotwire Hot Rates are given information about the hotel’s star rating, amenities, neighbourhood and customer reviews of the hotel.  Once the room has been booked, the name of the hotel is revealed.

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Limos.com raises $10m, launches new corporate travel management product

Limos.com, an offering set up by former members of Hotwire.com team, has announced $10 million in financing from venture capital firm Austin Ventures and the release of its new corporate travel management product, Limos.com for Business.

The new Austin Ventures investment adds to the company's original funding of $5 million from Canal Partners.

T.J. Clark, Limos.com president and CEO, said, “After our experience at Hotwire.com, we couldn’t understand why there wasn’t an easy way to search, compare and book car services online, which has been so popular for hotel rooms and airfares.”

Clark said the company is counting on Austin Ventures as a partner for advancing the company’s strategy and business model, “given their experience and proven success in online travel”.

The company stated that Limos.com has become the largest online destination for limo services (based on site traffic and unique visitors as measured by Google Ad Planner) by offering leisure travellers easy comparison of top local car service companies, consumer reviews and instant online booking that clearly shows the total cost upfront, including the driver's tip.

Ground transportation in the U.S. alone is a $36 billion industry, a figure being attributed to IBIS Research 2010 ($17 billion private car and $19 billion taxi), with less than five percent of reservations currently made online. Additionally, the industry is highly fragmented with local, independent car service operators whose inventory is not broadly available online.

“In our view, car service is the last major travel category to become web-enabled,” said Austin Ventures Partner Mike Dodd.

New offerings

The company has come up with a new offering in Limos.com for Business, an online car service management product that offers advanced controls for corporate travel managers and direct access to local car service operators..

Limos.com estimates that its system holds specially-negotiated rates and inventory from 80 percent of the U.S. suppliers who specialise in corporate car services.

Last year Limos.com expanded its reach to China, India and South America.

“We estimate that companies overpay by at least 40 percent on car services when they don’t book with local suppliers,” said Clark. “Limos..com for Business also provides business travel managers with modern controls like reporting and policy settings, which have been so successful in helping companies save millions in their air and hotel spend.”

In coming weeks, the company also will launch its mobile applications for iPhone and Android, which will allow travellers to search and book car services “on the go” in all of its markets worldwide.

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Eurostar reworks on its brand identity

Eurostar, the high-speed rail service between the UK and mainland Europe, has unveiled its new look brand identity.

The revamp comes as the brand prepares itself for competition, following European Union liberalisation of the high-speed rail route between London and the Continent, reported marketingmagazine.co.uk. The cross-Channel rail operator is replacing its 15-year-old logo, featuring three stripes and a star, with one that uses a metallic-coloured lower-case `e’.

The branding has been done by design agency Someone.


Nick Mercer, commercial director of Eurostar says that this rebrand sets to underpin significant change.

“After an amazing 16 years of providing the leading European international train service, we have committed to a £700m investment to radically improve and invent new services, products and their organisation as a whole,” said Mercer. “The organisation — once three companies spread over three countries — is now one London based company and is more agile and speedily adaptive than ever before. With so much change — we needed a way to signal what’s new within the service — our new brand identity will signal these changes… so where you see the new look, you’ll experience our new thinking.”

On design methodology, Someone stated that “its approach to the re-brand was unusual in that it didn’t rely on one idea, but many ideas in many channels to create a more adaptive, flexible and useful brand identity.”

Eurostar has three levels of service. Standard, Standard Premier, & Business Premier. The new names and branding for each of the services were created by SomeOne.

Earlier this year Eurostar announced a continued increase in overall sales revenue in 2010 compared with 2009.

Sales revenue for the year is up 12% on 2009, from £675.5m to £760m. This uplift is due to the continued recovery of the business market that has been a trend through the year as well as growth in the overall number of passengers choosing high-speed rail over plane for short-haul travel in Europe.

The number of passengers travelling on Eurostar in 2010 rose to 9.5 million compared with 9.2 million during 2009, an increase of over three percent.

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Ryanair to introduce new €2 levy

Ryanair has chosen to introduce a €2 levy per passenger for all bookings made from April 4. The fee is being described as a trip surcharge to cover the cost of paying compensation when flights are cancelled. The airline is looking to mitigate future disruptions and care bills that have already cost the carrier in excess of €100 million over the past year.

The carrier said the levy was to fund its costs under the EU261 European passenger compensation regulation.

Ryanair said that over the past year it has suffered costs of over €100m arising from flight cancellations, delays and providing right to care, compensation and legal expenses.

Ryanair said if the passenger compensation regulation EU261 were reformed, it would reduce or eliminate the levy.

Ryanair’s spokesperson Stephen McNamara said the EU261 regulations are clearly discriminatory in the way they are applied to airlines, by making airlines responsible for delays, cancellations and right of care expenses during force majeure (unforeseeable) events such as volcanic eruptions, the snow closure of airports and the frequent ATC strikes across Europe.

“It is clearly unfair that airlines are obliged to provide meals and accommodation for passengers (for days and weeks in some cases), simply because governments close their airspace, or air traffic controllers walk off the job, or incompetent airports fail to clear their runways of snow,” said McNamara. “While we regret the imposition of this levy, the extraordinary costs which have been imposed on us by delays and cancellations under these discriminatory regulations must be recovered from passengers.”

Commenting on the announcement from Ryanair that a new €2 fee will be added to the ticket price to cover flight cancellations and delays, Bob Atkinson, travel expert at www.travelsupermarket.com said: “Whilst on the face of it this new charge by Ryanair may not be welcomed by passengers, the airline is at the very least being transparent about the fee. Every other airline that flies in or out of the EU will have had to have absorbed these costs as a result of the EU261 regulation payouts and this will have manifested in either increased airfares for customers or reduced margins for shareholders.” 

Atkinson added, “The issue at the heart of the matter is that the current EU261 regulations fail to protect travellers in the way they should. For example, the regulation is arbitrary; it bears no relation to the fare paid by the passenger and does not cover all journeys flying into the European Union. These regulations need a significant overhaul in order to ensure all customers who have a genuine right to protection and compensation can receive this without undue complications and also for airlines to be able to seek redress for cancellations for matters outside of their control, e.g. the closure of airspace by governments.”

“The regulations also cover for compensation on flight delays, however many airlines are currently not paying this out pending the review of a court case under these regulations involving Air France. This is leaving many customers who have suffered flight delays out of pocket, unsure if they will ever receive the compensation they believe is due to them,” said Atkinson.

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Pioneering a new category in the online travel space

IN-DEPTH: Heather Leisman, VP Partner Development, Jetsetter on what inspired the setting up of the venture and how the business model has evolved beyond flash sales

By Ritesh Gupta

Jetsetter, a private online community that provides members with insider access, expert knowledge, and exclusive deals, continues to make rapid strides.

Cracking the code on inspiration is a big focus for Jetsetter.  Inspiring members is the crux of this business and the company says it will continue to innovate new technology—from sort order of its emails to search functionality on the site—which will help members discover vacations most relevant to their tastes and sensibilities. 

Jetsetter, which has sold over 176,000 room nights since its launch in September 2009, has charted plans for aggressive growth.

“Jetsetter’s business model evolved beyond flash sales with the January launch of Jetsetter 24/7, our collection of hand-selected, verified vacations available 365 days per year at rate parity,” Heather Leisman, VP Partner Development, Jetsetter told EyeforTravel’s Ritesh Gupta in an interview.   

“In May, Jetsetter will launch our Expert Travel Planning business which provides members the opportunity to consult with one of our travel correspondents, who are some of the world’s most experienced travel writers.  No other travel site offers such diverse products and services,” shared Leisman, who is scheduled to speak at the forthcoming Online Marketing Strategies for Travel 2011 Conference, to be held in Miami (June 7-8).

“We actually see ourselves pioneering a new category in the online travel space.  One that returns to the expertise and high touch customer service of offline agencies, coupled with the ease of booking and pricing transparency of a travel site,” said Leisman.

Leisman spoke about the venture in detail. Excerpts:

Considering the myriad of options available for planning and booking, what do you think is the major challenge which travel suppliers and intermediaries are facing today? And in this context, which areas are you trying to address through your venture and how?

There are dozens of travel sites that do a great job helping people get from point A to point B.  But, before Jetsetter there was not one travel site that helped people decide WHERE to go on vacation and help them book the trip. 

Jetsetter was inspired by the editorial and photos of a glossy travel magazine.

We wanted to bring that type of storytelling to e-commerce. 

1. Inspire people to travel. 
2. Introduce them to new destinations.
3. Provide a fast and efficient booking engine.

In November last year, Founder and CEO Drew Patterson acknowledged that there was skepticism as to whether Jetsetter members would purchase travel in a flash sale in the “early days”, but the company said several factors have resulted in such performance. Could you elaborate on how is the concept continuing to gain acceptance and what according to you are still the major challenges in improving the perception about the same?

Since launching in September 2009, Jetsetter has sold over 176,000 room nights.  We’ve featured more than 800 partners in over 70 countries from well known luxury brands such as Peninsula, Windstar Cruises, Rocco Forte, Kempinski, Banyan Tree, Relais & Chateaux and Coppola Resorts; Iconic hotels such as Hôtel Plaza Athénée, Hôtel de Crillon, Bauer Venice, The Broadmoor and The Greenbrier; and Hip Boutiques such as Ace Hotels, Standard Hotels, Morgans Hotel Group and The James.

Jetsetter members are true Jetsetters.  Their demand for experiential trips—from Masai Warrior training to hiking Kilimanjaro --continue to outperform projections from our partners and even our team.  Partners representing complicated itineraries or high ticket items often tell us they are using Jetsetter as a marketing vehicle.  The value for them is to introduce their product to our 2 million members, but they are often blown away by the volume of bookings that we generate as well.

More than 75 percent of Jetsetter members take three to five trips per year. Seventy-three percent of Jetsetter members are under 41. Can you explain the preferences in terms of travel planning and also buying behaviour of your core audience?

Unlike traditional OTAs, members come to Jetsetter to be inspired, typically with no specific destination in mind.  In fact, 84 percent of purchasing members indicate that they were not planning to book that hotel prior to visiting Jetsetter. 

Our average advance purchase for hotel properties is over 60 days, which is exponentially longer than other OTAs. Jetsetter is an effective way for partners to build a base on their books well in advance. 

Can you explain how typically you go about offering deals/ exclusive offerings to your subscribers? How do you make it enticing for them to avail the same?

Jetsetter features 15-30 vacations each week, on sale at prices up to 50% off in the flash section of our website.  In January of this year, we launched Jetsetter 24/7, a collection of more than 400 hand-selected, verified vacations available 365 days at Jetsetter exclusive pricing. 

The majority of our bookings in flash come shortly after the sale launches at 3pm.  Members opt in to receive either weekly or daily emails.  Like a travel magazine, Jetsetter’s emails tell a story about the destination and illustrate that story with beautiful photography.  For example, earlier this year we launched “As Seen on the Bachelor” – a collection of our partner properties, such as Peninsula New York and Cap Maison in St Lucia, that had been featured on the show.  In March we launched “Vacation Like Royalty” which included a selection of partners, such as Hotel de Crillon in Paris and Relais Royal in Mirepoix, where William and Kate have stayed throughout their courtship. 

Because we only feature a limited number of partners every week, we also want to be sure that our offers are diverse.  Our team of editors is tasked with assembling an assortment of properties to ensure that every week, we are representing a variety of destinations, property types (i.e. boutique, resort), property style (i.e. hip & trendy, classic luxury) and experience types (i.e. hotel, cruise, tour, weekend getaway).

Could you cite few examples from your experience of working with hotel partners and how have they benefited from such offering?

Jetsetter works with a great breadth and range of partners to meet a variety of goals. Take the “classic luxury” partner who is concerned that the average age of its customer is aging and views Jetsetter as a way to reach a new generation of customers.  Many of our luxury brand partners have reported that over 90 percent of Jetsetter bookings are first time guests.  For the “small independent boutique” partner, who has an incredible product but limited marketing funds, Jetsetter is an ideal way to reach a highly-targeted audience with no up-front marketing cost. 

Mark Shrives, director of e-commerce for Lebua Hotels & Resorts, first used Jetsetter to increase awareness for his hotels in Thailand after political unrest hurt tourism throughout the region but he was pleasantly surprised to also sell a large quantity of rooms. 

Lastly, the “bucket list” partner can market their vacation to an audience that dreams of these types of trips but has no idea how to plan one.  We receive a lot of feedback from members who thanked us for hand-selecting safari companies and providing a seamless booking experience. 

Could you list few do’s and don’ts for any hotel company that it is planning to work with private travel sites and group buying sites?

a. Be choosy: Do your homework before you sign on.  The flash sale and group buying space has gotten quite crowded lately, but there is a great range in what each offers. We encourage partners to research the ones they are interested in, pick the one or two that they want to work with and decline the rest. 

b. Limit sales per year: The goal of Jetsetter is to drive incremental bookings for our partners by inspiring our members to travel to a place that they had not considered.  We recognise that the power of private sales is the element of surprise and in ensuring that a consumer cannot “plan” to book via a private sale.  When a partner is featured on a private sale site too frequently, the end effect is that consumers will wait for that sale, thereby cannibalising full price business.  We typically recommend a sale on Jetsetter 2-4 times per year, depending on the partner. 

c. Discount in members-only environment first: Jetsetter can help hotels protect their price integrity if you discount with us up front.  We’ll drive a lot of bookings quickly, behind a firewall, then you wont’ have to discount as much or at all in the public marketplace

What’s your plan for the mobile channel? What’s on Jetsetter’s agenda for this year?  

Jetsetter is extremely focused on mobile and we are in the process of tripling the size of our mobile team.  As we continue to think about ways to inspire our members, adapting Jetsetter for new platforms is an obvious next step.  Since our site is so photo driven, it’s important that we optimise the site for each platform.  Jetsetter launched our first iPhone app in February.  It’s already the #4 most popular travel app in iTunes and the folks from Apple tell us it’s the best mobile app since Kayak.  Look for Blackberry and Android versions later this year.  We are also creating something really special for the iPad but we’re keeping this one in stealth mode for a few more months.

Online Marketing Strategies for Travel 2011 Conference

Heather Leisman, VP Partner Development, Jetsetter is scheduled to speak at the forthcoming Online Marketing Strategies for Travel 2011 Conference, to be held in Miami (June 7-8). For more information, click here

Or

Contact:
Gina Baillie
VP, Marketing,
EyeforTravel
E: gina@eyefortravel.com
T: UK +44 (0)207 375 7197

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easyJet and VisitBritain join hands, to invest £18m

easyJet has formed a partnership with VisitBritain, the UK’s national tourism agency, to jointly market Britain as a tourist destination over the next four years. The deal between the two parties is worth over £18million in cash and marketing in kind.

“The deal will help boost visitor numbers to the country and capitalise on the unique opportunities provided by the impending Royal Wedding, Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and 2012 Games,” stated an official release. The investment will also provide support in ensuring that the showcasing of Britain through the series of events is capitalised on by the industry in tactical marketing to ensure overseas visitors come and experience what they have seen on their screens.

Carolyn McCall, CEO at easyJet said: “Over 300 million Europeans live within a one hour drive of an easyJet airport and this partnership will help easyJet bring even more visitors to the UK.”

The four-year marketing campaign, to be launched in Britain’s key inbound tourism markets later this year, aims to deliver:

• Four million extra overseas visitors,
• £2 billion more visitor spending the UK, and
• 50,000 new jobs across the country.

easyJet’s contribution to the campaign will be focused mainly in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Switzerland which match VisitBritain’s priority countries for attracting tourists.

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Cheapflights Media invests in travel meta-search site momondo.com

Online media company Cheapflights Media has completed an investment in the travel meta-search site momondo.com and its parent company Skygate International.

Momondo and Skygate will continue to operate from Copenhagen as independent brands. Momondo was launched in 2006.

Further details haven’t been shared.

In 2010, Momondo and Cheapflights collectively hosted over 115M visits from travellers across 15 countries and listed millions of travel deals from over 700 airline and travel partners.

“Initially, Cheapflights Media will be replacing our Zugu meta-search product and brand with Momondo. Down the road, we will explore opportunities to leverage technology, data, and advertising partnerships across the Momondo and Cheapflights networks to bring better travel search solutions to more consumers world-wide,” said Chris Cuddy, Cheapflights Media’s CEO.

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Lastminute.com works on a new positioning

Lastminute.com has chosen to reposition itself as an online portal for entertainment, travel and leisure.

The company is launching a pan-European campaign to convey the same. It is the first time lastminute.com has rolled out a campaign and strapline across the eight European territories. A new strapline, ’Stories start here’, is being adopted across Europe.

Mark Newton, Lastminute chief marketing officer, said, “We’ve always sought to innovate through our marketing, spending the past decade building an attractive and appealing brand. As the business has expanded across Europe, we need a platform that is consistent across all our markets and ’Stories start here’ does that job.”

UK marketing director Mark Fell, in an interview with marketingweek.co.uk, said, “The truth is that as a business we’ve changed - we’ve grown to become part of a global group and through acquisitions we now have local presence and expertise in local markets. We’ve also broadened the scope of what we offer so we’ve become a curator of people’s free time. Calling us an online travel agent doesn’t seem to capture us anymore.”

In the same interview, commenting on the revenue split between holiday and other revenue streams and the overall goal, Fell reportedly said, the percentage split is 87% holidays (including travel, flights, holidays, hotels) and “13% other things”. “However, all those categories have different occasions, people buy holidays less frequently but clearly they are at a much higher price point. We are very comfortable with the revenue split and see ourselves as guardians of people’s free time and see ourselves being a consumer-led retailer,” he said.

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Free online air fare database launched for 1,500 city pairs worldwide

The Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation (CAPA) has launched a new free service that provides an interactive online database of economy, business and first class fares covering 1,500 of the world’s busiest city pairs.

CAPA has signed an agreement with ITA Software to receive the city pair fares data on a daily basis.

CAPA’s new database can be found at http://www.centreforaviation.com/profiles/airports/.

“The fares data give fascinating insights into airline pricing and competitive trends in key markets and will be a very useful tool for aviation professionals and consumers,” said Peter Harbison, CAPA’s executive chairman.

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