It’s tough starting a travel website. But, what about launching 11,700 English-language online travel websites, plus sub-domains in Spanish and Chinese?
Swiftrank, a Singapore-headquartered company with offices in the U.S. and U.K., says it launched 11,700 online travel websites, including Luxury Tampa Hotels, Â Five Star New York Hotels and Best Restaurants Manhattan, for examples, for hotels and other suppliers seeking incremental distribution, with a focus on consumers who search by destination rather than by brand.
In the works for around three years, Swiftrank can pull off such a yeoman task in part because of its “evolved content management system,” says Sue Heilbronner, chief marketing officer of Swiftrank global and president of Swiftrank North America.
For now, the focus is on U.S. hotels, Heilbronner says, with each website featuring about 20 properties. Today, consumers can book the hotels through an affiliate relationship with Booking.com.
But, Swiftrank plans on establishing direct connects with hotels in major markets, where the bookings would take place on the hotels’ websites, Heilbronner says.
So, tons of hotel websites already exist. How would Swiftrank differentiate its network?
Heilbronner answers that Swiftrank will be on the side of the supplier, enabling them to attract incremental direct connect bookings.
Hotels would be offered a cost-per-click program, although Swiftrank is in discussions with one large chain about establishing a standard commission model, she says.
Swiftrank also is mulling a flat-rate advertising fee for a set period, such as six months, Heilbronner says.
In addition to hotels, Swiftrank offers premium placements to car rental firms, casinos and spas.
The company says: “Swiftrank’s website management and distribution are supported by industry-leading SEO expertise, and the company’s travel partners will enjoy the returns associated with the trend toward search engines featuring websites that provide genuine choice to the users.”
Heilbronner says Swiftrank, which has the subdomains in Spanish and Chinese, is working on localized translations of its websites.
Well, Swiftrank may have a lot of travel websites, but it obviously isn’t the “largest global travel online travel network” using any other substantive metric.
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Yeah. All well and good. What about the customer… where are they in all this? I don’t see them at all. Kind of crucial to the business model I’d say?
Jeremy: What about the customer? Oh, ya. Let’s not forget them:)
You’re right. With hotels’ rate guarantees, what will pull the customer to these websites? Just because the company is targeting customers who shop by destination instead of any brand loyalty?
There has to be something compelling for the consumer once they land on the website.
Which is to say — I agree with your point.
The big words always sound nice, but in the end of the day this is a travel version of about.com – pure SEO play based on cheap labour. In the way search engines work today these sites have chance of making revenues, but if Google ‘tweaks’ its algorithm in the wrong direction, they’d have nothing left.
It does seem to be an almost pure SEO play. They can generate some search traffic to these websites over time but most people are skeptical about booking travel online and would rather receive a call from a major travel agency or book with one of the major OTA’s then just book with someone going for a direct match on the search engines. It should be interesting to see how it plays out.
SEO play – not really – they are building a link farm which is definitely a no no in the SEO world.