getaroom, getaroom, getaroom.com

getaroom.com, the hotel-booking site and call center business introduced by hotels.com founders David Litman and Bob Diener, just fired off $10 million worth of TV, radio and print ads in key markets across the country.

You can view one of the 30-second spots, unveiling the getaroom.com theme song to the tune of the William Tell Overture, on youtube.

"Name recognition is key to generating awareness and driving consumers to the getaroom.com website and call center," said Diener, in the press release announcing the ads. "These ads cut through the clutter and once you see and hear them our name certainly stays top of mind."

Litman and Diener delivered the advertising the old-fashioned way: They wrote, directed and paid for the ads themselves.

These guys know what they are doing. I have visions of them pacing the Dallas call center at this moment, correcting the miscues of call center agents and grabbing the headsets themselves, taking customers' calls.

As you may recall, getaroom.com lists published rates on its website, but consumers can register and phone the call center for unpublished discounts, said to "typically" be 10 percent to 25 percent, but tapping out at 50 percent.

Not that there are a bunch of novices in the call center and filling out hotel sales teams.

The Dallas Business Journal reported that getaroom.com hired many of its 30 full-time and 20 part-time employees from the ranks of hotels.com, Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz.

You can imagine the call going out to former employees of the Diener-Litman-run hotels.com, which IAC finished acquiring in June 2003 and Expedia now owns, saying, "we're back."

The two had taken a five-year sabbatical from the travel industry because of a noncompete agreement with hotels.com.

The Dallas Business Journal said getaroom.com projects $45 million in revenue for the first year.

Some other things that getaroom.com has going for it include: an 800 number with the word "hotels" (800-hotels-8) in it, and an understanding of social media.

There's a bit of irony in a company that is pushing consumers to book over the telephone, instead of online for the best discounts, appears very adept at playing on the social media airwaves.

Here's getaroom.com's Facebook page.

Here's Diener gabbing on Twitvid.io.

When you register for getaroom.com, there are links at the bottom of the page to getaroom.com on Facebook and Twitter.

And, in another interesting twist, Travel Dividends believes that the commissions getaroom.com pays through its travel affiliate program are "rather rich," inferring that getaroom.com could make some headway against more modest programs offered by Expedia, Hotwire, Travelocity, Priceline and Orbitz.

Diener tells me that in addition to the company's first advertising campaign, "much more is coming."

getaroom.com just starting offering inventory from Barcelona hotels and plans on introducing other cities in Europe later in August, Diener says.

Launching a $10 million advertising campaign for a start-up is a pretty good start, especially when you realize that the duo made a few pennies from selling hotels.com and have deep pockets.

William Tell Overture or not, I think you will be hearing the name getaroom.com a lot in the future.

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Fly.com Toe-to-Toe with TripAdvisor Flights

Travelzoo's Fly.com is displaying surprising strength in metasearch when measured against TripAdvisor's flight-search tool in terms of unique searchers and unique visitors when you consider that Travelzoo is starting from a much smaller base.

TripAdvisor flights and Fly.com were launched within a couple of weeks of one another in February.

In dueling presentations with financial analysts this week, Expedia Inc. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said TripAdvisor's flight metasearch offering is performing "extraordinarily well," with its searches exceeding the 2.4 million in June which Travelzoo attributed to Fly.com during the Travelzoo conference call.

Khosrowshahi said he wouldn't release TripAdvisor flights' numbers, but I will detail some. Please note that Travelzoo cited "searches" and I will detail "unique searchers." Here are some numbers that the travel team at Compete Inc. put together for me:

• Unique searchers in June: Kayak/SideStep 7,263,159; Bing Travel 1,525,604, TripAdvisor Flights 1,066,847 and Fly.com 913,637.

Compete travel analyst Michael Redbord puts Fly.com's strength in perspective.

"Compared to Fly.com, when you consider the pre-existing monthly traffic delta between respective owners Travelzoo and TripAdvisor, you're talking 4 million versus 12 million uniques (Compete June numbers)," Redbord says. "The opportunity for TA to leverage its existing engaged user base is probably at least 3 times as large as Travelzoo leveraging its own to drive traffic to Fly.com."

In terms of monetizing metasearch, the number of total searches is a more relevant metric than unique searchers or unique visitors. The number of searches that a unique searcher might conduct can vary widely from website to website.

But, Compete's unique searcher numbers, if they are to be believed, portray some better-than-expected Fly.com strength in relation to its competitors.

And, Compete's June numbers place Fly.com ahead of TripAdvisor flights in terms of unique visitors, 1,257,037 to 1,241,229. Again, that shows some unexpected muscle from Fly.com, a sort of David versus Goliath story.

Fly.com and metasearch is a key part of Travelzoo's growth strategy, along with subscriber growth for its deal newsletters. As part of that subscriber growth strategy, Travelzoo began publishing show and event advertising in its North America newsletters and is starting to do likewise in Europe and Asia-Pacific.

With the kind of unique searcher numbers and total searches that Fly.com is starting to post, it looks like Fly.com has the potential to fly.

Travelzoo reported that it spent $9.6 million in marketing in the U.S. and Canada in the second quarter, an increase of $2 million from the second quarter of 2008. And, Travelzoo attributed much of the jump to "a $914,000 increase" in Fly.com marketing.

Thus, Fly.com already is a player.

After all, the advertising/media business is hot.

TripAdvisor revenue accounted for about 10 percent of Expedia Inc. revenue in the second quarter.

Now, you know why the rise of metasearch start-ups seemingly is endless while the online travel agency business is saturated.

Is Orbitz Poised for a Priceline-like Comeback?

I reported yesterday how Barney Harford, the Orbitz CEO six months or so into his tenure, is stirring things up at 500 W. Madison St., Chicago, in trying to come to grips with building the Orbitz hotel business.

I spoke to a handful of analysts about Orbitz's prospects and they agreed that a rebound would take a protracted effort.

The Orbitz situation, in its broad outlines, sort of reminds me of Priceline's struggles when its stock was trading at $1.31 on Dec. 29, 2000. Orbitz Worldwide stock, trending upward, sits at $2.41 before this morning's open, a lowly figure when compared with Priceline's stock at $122.72.

I speculated a few weeks ago, that some sort of Orbitz-Kayak combination could be in the offing because Orbitz, with all of the consumer traffic that it draws, needs to leverage its potential in the advertising/media business.

One of the parties called my idea "ludicrous."

Alas, my ideas have been called worse.

But, there indeed was something to my speculation because Orbitz recently relaunched Trip.com, a facilitated-search vehicle, to take advantage of all those lookers who don't book.

In researching this post about Orbitz, I also learned that there was speculation late last year and early this year that Orbitz separately had talks with Priceline and American Express about merger agreements.

A Priceline combination with Orbitz might have helped Priceline expand into European and Asian markets that it has yet to penetrate.

However, I'm told that an Orbitz consolidation with American Express, which didn't lead to a contract signing, was much closer to fruition than the Orbitz discussions with Priceline.

Amex has yet to distinguish itself in the online travel arena -- far from it, actually. Perhaps its rumored talks with Orbitz were a bid to jump-start that effort.

However, the feeling I'm getting now from speaking with a handful of analysts is that nothing is imminent on the Orbitz consolidation front, including other scenarios such as an Expedia-Orbitz merger, a Travelocity-Orbitz marriage or a Kayak-Orbitz joining of forces, although all of these players undoubtedly have pondered these strategic combinations.

Tom Botts, a partner in Hudson Crossing, says there would be too much conflict in an Orbitz-Kayak merger because Orbitz "has staked out a position as a friend to many," including its relationships with Bing Travel, FareCompare and Kayak, among others.

Botts believes Orbitz will pursue a go-it-alone strategy for now.

Along the same lines, Soleil Securities analyst Jake Fuller believes an Orbitz-Kayak combo is not on the table, noting that Orbitz buying Kayak "wouldn't work."

With the Orbitz balance sheet loaded down with $652 million in debt and a market cap of $200 million, Kayak would need to access hard-to-obtain external capital if it were to ponder an Orbitz acquisition, Fuller said.

It's also unknown, Fuller said, whether the Blackstone Group, which controls Travelport and Orbitz, are in a selling frame of mind.

Another industry veteran, who declined to be identified, suggested that an Orbitz-Kayak merger would be a winner in terms of its potential in travel search and the media business, but some sort of paradigm shift would have to occur to make it financially feasible.

"Something would have to happen," this analyst said, mentioning that perhaps Blackstone would forgive some of Orbitz's debt for the right kind of deal.

Forrester Research travel analyst Henry Harteveldt says he doesn't see Orbitz combining with another online travel company like Priceline, Expedia or Travelocity because of antitrust reasons, but he could envision OTCs picking off parts of Orbitz Worldwide, such as ebookers or HotelClub, if OWW conducted a fire sales of its pieces.

"I think the Orbitz franchise is solid," Harteveldt says. "The challenge for them is to rethink their user experience. The shopping experience hasn't changed much since they launched."

Another analyst, who commented anonymously, said Orbitz must focus on generating enough free cash flow to pay down its debt much quicker than it has been doing.

He doesn't believe Orbitz, under Harford, whom he termed "the smartest guy in the room," will become insolvent, but could face a protracted struggle with its "product not becoming very big."

The up-side, this analyst said, is that Orbitz could rebound, if some of its hotel initiatives take hold, in two to three years.

Several analysts said it was too soon to tell whether Orbitz can make the kind of comeback that Priceline began to pull off some seven or eight years ago.

All were awaiting some hint of Orbitz's prospects from the release of its second quarter financial results Aug. 5, and wanted to assess OWW's results for the rest of 2009 before taking a position on OWW's fate.

Said Botts of Hudson Crossing: "I don't know enough yet to say if it is the phoenix rising."

Trip.com Revived and Will Lodging.com Be Next?

Orbitz has resuscitated Trip.com for facilitated search in a bid to build its fledgling advertising/media business.

I'm betting that Lodging.com, which was part of Cendant Travel Distribution Services and now is part of the Orbitz Worldwide portfolio, will be next.

Trip.com was relaunched in the context of Orbitz trying to leverage under-utilized or unused assets.

Today, if you surf to Lodging.com, you are redirected to Orbitz.com.

In a Cendant 10-K report, published in 2004, Cendant said of Lodging.com: "Lodging.com provides consumers access to specially negotiated rates at more than 10,600 economy, mid-level and luxury hotels in markets around the world. Lodging.com customers also have access to Galileo's entire published hotel rate inventory, and can book vacation packages through Neat Group's packaging engine on the Lodging.com site. With a network of nearly 4,300 distribution affiliates, Lodging.com also offers hoteliers access and control over their pricing and yield management."

As with Trip.com, I believe that Orbitz soon will tip its hand about a relaunched Lodging.com, which arguably is a very valuable domain name.

Perhaps it will be a hotel booking site or maybe a hotel metasearch or facilitated search offering?

I don't know the details, but as Orbitz does everything it can to build its hotel business, allowing Lodging.com to languish wouldn't be prudent.

A multi-brand strategy pays dividends for SEO, becomes another driveway for consumers entering the Orbitz mansion, and also enables a company to bid on more Google keywords than it would be allowed to do if it were limited to one brand.

In principle, a reinvigorated Lodging.com makes a lot of sense.

Mega, Not Meta, Move: Orbitz Enters Search Business

I wrote several weeks ago that Orbitz would attempt to maximize all of those lookers perusing its shop, take its media business a leap forward and get into the search business, possibly through a merger of some sort with Kayak.

Well, Orbitz, has entered the search business on its own, for now, by relaunching Trip.com as a search business. This fairly huge development was brought to my attention by Tom Botts of the Hudson Crossing Travel Industry Insight blog.

All of the online travel agencies, who rightly refer to themselves as online travel companies, are attempting to ratchet up their advertising/media businesses because trying to make consumers complete a transaction sometimes appears to be as easy as finding the proverbial needle in a haystack.

So Orbitz, through Trip.com , will attempt to garner meaningful revenue through all of that traffic.

Perhaps one day Orbitz's search business may eclipse its transaction business.

Tim Hughes blogged the other day about the differences between online travel agencies and metasearch companies.

One difference that he didn't talk about in any detail is that metasearch and other companies that facilitate searches of other booking engines, which is Trip.com's tack, are sprouting up faster than you can keep track of. Meanwhile, launches of new OTAs are rare.

The reason is because search and metasearch is where the money is at, and the OTA business, with looker-to-booker ratios climbing every second, is under increasing pressure.

After all, Expedia Inc., with Expedia.com as its jewel, recently launched flight metasearch through TripAdvisor.com.

It is interesting that although Orbitz and Kayak haven't merged -- and such a game-changing move may be far-fetched or in the cards -- Kayak and sister brand SideStep are participating in Trip.com.

And so is everyone else, including Expedia, Hotwire, Priceline, Travelocity, Bing and fly.com, among others.

Of course, Orbitz's Trip.com is now in competition with many of these companies in the search business. Expedia, after all, has TripAdvisor, Travelocity fields igoUgo, Bing has Bing Travel and fly.com belongs to the Travelzoo portfolio.

This is a huge move by Orbitz, and more proof that Orbitz Worldwide CEO Barney Harford was serious when he said the company would push hard to ramp up its advertising/media business.

With air booking fees gone, the media/search business is looking so much more important.

TripAdvisor: The Beat (of Hawaii) Goes On

Jeff Tucker of the Beat of Hawaii blog has done some great reporting on the TripAdvisor hotel-review issue.

Tucker reported last month that TripAdvisor was posting warning notices next to the displays of hotels that were suspected of gaming the review system. (It turns out that TripAdvisor had been doing this for several years, but Tucker put it all together.)

And yesterday the Beat of Hawaii disclosed that many of those warning notices had disappeared.

Tucker counted almost 100 such warning badges in June, but found only a little more than a dozen in his latest tally.

I, too, have written about this issue extensively, and see that one hotel that I focused on, the Radisson Hotel Fort Worth - Fossil Creek, still carries a warning next to its display on TripAdvisor.

Tucker points out that Hotel Renew in Hawaii went from zero (it had a warning badge) to hero (there is no warning notice anymore and it currently is rated No. 2 of 101 Honolulu hotels) on TripAdvisor.

I don't expect TripAdvisor to disclose its one-on-one dealings with hotels, but it would be nice to get some input on whether the removal of so many warning badges represents a change in policy, righting a wrong or progress of some sort.

I don't expect TripAdvisor to greatly alter its hotel-review policy because it would hurt its advertising/media business by diminishing the number of reviews and would possibly blunt its growth tear internationally.

But, some sort of process to verify whether review writers actually stayed at the property in question would be, well, a badge of honor for TripAdvisor.

Update: TripAdvisor posted a comment on the Beat of Hawaii blog about TripAdvisor's practices.

It states: "There have not been any recent changes in our warning badge policy or implementation. As we’ve said before, these warnings appear on less than a fraction of 1% of the properties on TripAdvisor, and the exact number fluctuates over time. Each of the penalty notices has an expiration date; the duration that a notice is posted is based on both the nature of the violation and owner cooperation in resolving problem issues. When a notice expires, it comes off of the site.

"As a user-generated content site, we are highly committed to maintaining content integrity and providing transparency for travelers — that’s why we implemented the red badge system. We feel it provides both a heads up to travelers, and a strong disincentive for properties who consider trying to manipulate the system.

"Thanks. We appreciate your interest in TripAdvisor, and in our mission of helping travelers plan and have the perfect trip."

I then asked TripAdvisor what happens when a notice expires, but the issues have not been resolved.

TripAdvisor told me that "if the property still isn’t playing by the rules, then the red badge warning stays up."

So, then, in TripAdvisor's view, the problem with fake reviews must have been scaled back to miniscule dimensions.

We'll see.

Orbitz and Kayak: Perfect Together?

Several people whom I respect have approached me -- independently -- in recent weeks with speculation that some sort of combination or merger of Orbitz and Kayak would make sense.

The speculation speaks to the power of travel search.

I say the following only somewhat facetiously, but the travel industry is almost getting to the point where almost nobody will be selling travel anymore -- all of the travel businesses will be building platforms to enable consumers to search for travel instead as part of their ever-growing advertising/media strategies.

Think of Google, which sells huge amounts of travel advertising, but doesn't own a travel business.

Which brings me to Orbitz and Kayak, already close partners in Kayak metasearch. Orbitz is Kayak's exclusive online travel agency partner in Kayak metasearch.

Speculation has been rife that Orbitz, the weakest sister among the online travel agencies, is in play. When Expedia eliminated flight-booking fees, taking away a huge chunk of Orbitz's revenue, the prognosticators offered a scenario that perhaps Expedia would buy Orbitz or maybe Travelocity and Orbitz would join forces.

But, the Orbitz-Kayak merger theory posits that Orbitz could build a profitable search business in tandem with Kayak's metasearch platform if Orbitz downplayed its transaction business and leveraged the huge amount of air and hotel searches that consumers already are conducting on its global websites.

For Kayak, a merger of some sort with the larger and search-query-rich Orbitz brand would give Kayak even greater scale, including in markets like the U.K., where Kayak's effort have been sluggish.

I wrote in this blog recently, how Pegasus Solutions found that its system gets 1,900 hits from travel lookers for each booking conversion.

In this regard, travel businesses across the spectrum are trying to grow and monetize their advertising/media platforms as an alternative to their fickle, competition-laden transaction businesses.

From a financial standpoint, I don't know how a Kayak-Orbitz merger would work.

Orbitz, saddled with debt and struggling, has limited options. And, although Kayak acquired SideStep for around $200 million in 2007, an outright purchase of Orbitz would seemingly be cost-prohibitive, given Orbitz's huge debt load.

Still, wiser heads than mine are telling me that the financial folks can figure out a formula for getting an Orbitz-Kayak combination done.

Such a deal would speak volumes about the evolution of the travel business.

Continental, Houston Astros' Airline, Hits Foul Ball with HGH-Releaser Ad

Continental, the official airline of the Houston Astros baseball team, hits a foul ball, in my opinion, with a print advertisement in its in-flight magazine topped with the headline: "Grow Young with HGH."

Human Growth Hormone, after all, is banned in Major League Baseball and condemned by MLB Commissioner Bud Selig.

I saw the ad yesterday when I flew Continental home to New Jersey from the TravelCom conference in Atlanta.

The advertisement, from BIEHealth.US, is not for synthetic HGH, but for GHR (Growth Hormone Releaser), which is said to be a natural supplement that prods "your pituitary to secrete extra HGH and then accentuate them to full potential with a proper diet and HGH-releasing exercises," according to the website.

Some of these anti-aging products, with their hyperbolic claims, have been condemned by the Federal Trade Commission, although I couldn't find a specific complaint about GHR.

Still, the ad in Continental's in-flight magazine refers to GHR as "the Reverse Aging Miracle" and goes on to say how HGH reverses hemorrhoids, arthritis and angina.

Wow, if only all those professional baseball players, believed to be weaned from steroids and possibly taking HGH, would opt for this natural HGH-releaser instead and perform workouts heavy on the "HGH-releasing exercises."

We'd have a whole new meaning for "The Natural."

C'mon Continental. You are a damn good airline. You are sending the wrong message and you are better than this.

UPDATE: As a commentator below pointed out, Continental doesn't publish its in-flight magazine. It is published by The Pohly Company.

However, Continental is responsible for its own brand, and associating the Continental brand with an HGH-like "natural" supplement, is a screwball move.

Should Expedia Opt Out of Behavioral Ads Push?

Imagine if your reading habits at the library or bookstore were public record and advertisers used that information to hand you a cellphone application when you walked into Best Buy?
Switch to the online arena and that's basically what's happening with Expedia's new PassportAds program, which I described here.
Expedia and others inside and outside the travel industry are selling advertisers data from your Internet cookies, supposedly without any personally identifiable information, so marketers can more-effectively target you when you surf around to major travel and non-travel websites.
When did our online travel buying habits become commodities? Probably quite some time ago, but now major websites, seeking new revenue streams, are accelerating the sale of information about your browsing habits.
While Expedia's program is for ads to be posted on U.S. websites, international advertisers are getting involved in the program, and Expedia is mulling expanding PassportAds internationally.
I don't mean to pick on Expedia. Other major websites are getting into this arena, too. It is a major trend in the advertising industry.
The FTC proposed some guidelines on the behavioral-advertising issue. Among them, the FTC rightfully argues the cookie-sellers should prominently disclose these practices to consumers and not necessarily bury these disclosures within hard-to-fathom privacy policies.
Expedia's partner in the venture, BlueKai, gives consumers the option of managing which of their buying preferences gets shared with advertisers or opting out altogether.
I visited that page, and BlueKai knew, for instance, that I would be traveling in the next 7 to 14 days.
As Expedia and other travel companies engage in bolstering their media programs by selling cookie data, at the very least they should explain their behavioral-advertising business on prime real estate, their home pages, and give unwitting consumers the option of withdrawing from these advertising programs.