The advertisement will run for February across a number of television channels with the aim of reaching people the site might not otherwise attract.

It is part of  a £3 million above the line marketing campaign which will run over the course of the year.

Tom Valentine, Secret Escapes managing director says:

“Online is very different, it’s people who are looking for a a holiday break. On television the target type is a person that probably doesn’t know we exist. We’re not the most massive brand right now so it is about telling people about Secret Escapes now.”

He adds that the company aims to double membership from its current base of just over a million in a year and is currently recruiting one new member by word of mouth for every member it otherwise acquires.

The ad will be supported by communications with the site’s existing member base as well as social media and other digital activity.

Secret Escapes, which was founded a year go (TLabs here), announced details of second round funding in October as well as a string of partnerships including a deal to provide hotels and city breaks to lifestyle site Achica via a white label.

Here’s the ad in full:

The Achica partnership is the fourth Secret Escapes has sealed since its launch in February.

The start-up, which announced second round funding in October, already has deals with Teletext Holidays and Planet Confidential and has also recently formed a partnership with the Telegraph Media Group.

Secret Escapes boss Alex Saint describes this latest tie-up with Achica as a good demographic fit.

In terms of the number of flash sales sites that have sprung up recently, Saint believes there is room for one or two in each sector:

“We think we can do a great job. We’re ABTA bonded and we have a best online rate guarantee. We will not  put a deal on the site that is not significantly better than anywhere else. UK consumers are a bit discount weary and we have to be careful not to oversell the discount message.”

Secret Escapes also offers consumers links to other sites enabling them to check deals for themselves.

The company plans to bring further package holiday offers to the service early next year as well as a pipeline of further partnerships.

Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?

Where Ya Travelin? (WhereYaTravelin.com) allows you to create personalized trip itineraries that consist of money-saving coupons offered by hand-picked local businesses in popular tourist destinations.

Travelers submit their destination city and travel dates to the site and are presented with coupons in three different categories. Users can then select, purchase, and download up to 5 coupons for just $5. Coupons typically provide savings of between $8 and $25 per person, so the user always comes out far ahead.

The site just launched and is live with great deals in Seattle, San Francisco and Hawaii.

Ben Brannen and Matt Senechal are the co-founders of Where Ya Travelin?

• Ben Brannen has held positions as financial analyst at The Walt Disney Company and creative manager at BMG Music Publishing. In 2004, he founded and operated Brannen Creative Management and ARES Records, building profitable businesses in the music industry from the ground up. Most recently, Ben was partner and COO at Digital Trellis where he oversaw all daily operations, technology implementations, and business development.
• Matt Senechal is a technology attorney that has advised technology companies on a wide range of legal and business issues associated with electronic loyalty and couponing and various other consumer-facing mobile and electronic solutions. Prior to Where Ya Travelin?, Matt practiced technology law at Perkins Coie, LLP and worked inside a variety of technology companies including Amazon.com, Microsoft, and drugstore.com.

What financial support did you have to launch the business?

To date, Where Ya Travelin? has been entirely self-funded by co-founders Ben Brannen and Matt Senechal. Ben and Matt have funded and managed everything from branding to technology development, marketing, sales, and operations. By focusing on a core concept and keeping a close eye on costs, we’ve developed a successful business model for Where Ya Travelin? that is consumer-focused, cost-efficient, and poised to scale.

What problem are you trying to solve?

At its core, Where Ya Travelin? is designed to solve the age-old problem faced by all travelers once they’ve booked a trip: “What do I do when I get there and how can I save some dough doing it?”

In many ways, the Internet has made this problem even more severe for travelers by providing too much information in too many different locations. Information overload can make deciding what to do on your trip almost impossible.

Travelers need a trusted and easy-to-use solution to find great discounts on recommended activities and restaurants on their trips.

Describe the business, core products and services?

Where Ya Travelin? is an ecommerce website that allows users to create personalized trip itineraries that consist of money-saving coupons to great local businesses in popular tourist destinations.

Where Ya Travelin? cuts through the Internet-travel clutter with an elegant, intuitive, and easy-to-use interface that presents travelers with a manageable number of high-quality deals.

For any given search, Where Ya Travelin? presents up to 30 carefully selected deals that the user can easily sort into 3 categories. Because all deals are carefully sourced from top-quality, recommended restaurants and activities (and never aggregated from other sites), travelers can be assured that each deal will provide a real discount on a quality experience.

On the merchant side, Where Ya Travelin? is a high-value, low cost marketing tool. Where Ya Travelin? essentially serves as a digital couponing engine that specifically targets travelers visiting local destinations.

With no up-front participation costs and no back-end profit sharing, Where Ya Travelin? gives local merchants an easy opportunity to expand their customer base to travelers without risk, reaching travelers before they even land in their city.

Who are your key customers and users at launch?

Where Ya Travelin? has two sets of key customers at launch:

• local merchants who are seeking to promote their businesses to travelers
• travelers looking for good deals in their destinations.

On the merchant side, Where Ya Travelin? invites unique local merchants to participate and provides the opportunity for each to attract inbound travelers to their business at no cost.

On the traveller side, Where Ya Travelin? is designed to appeal to a broad base of Internet-savvy, active travelers looking for great activities, local flare, and money-saving offers.

Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?

Yes. On the merchant side, Where Ya Travelin? received overwhelming positive feedback while on-boarding merchants for launch. Merchants we have selected consistently recognize that the opportunity to distribute discounts targeted to travelers is a focused strategy that can build their business at virtually no risk or cost to them. Merchants relate bad experiences with daily deal sites and recognize that Where Ya Travelin? is distinct from that model.

Where Ya Travelin’s co-founders discussed the concept with countless consumers that validated the idea that they would pay a minimal service fee for a product that saves time when planning activities and provides easy access to hand picked, money-saving deals. Since launch, we are proving this with happy customers.

What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?

Where Ya Travelin? charges a flat $5 service fee for each five-deal itinerary. Five deals for $5.

Limited advertising on the site and business licensing strategies are other sources of potential revenue, but not part of the core model at launch.

The Where Ya Travelin? model is designed to have low overhead costs to support a predictable, linear scaling of the business. Unlike daily deal sites, the Where Ya Travelin? model does not require an unrelenting need to stock new deal inventory for each day.

Due to the comparative infrequency with which individual users will repeatedly visit any one particular destination, quality deals for each destination can remain on the site for longer periods of time. Therefore, sales staff can focus on adding new destinations and the company can dedicate resources towards user acquisition, incremental technology improvements, and investor returns.

Where Ya Travelin? is committed to building its core business, focusing on costs, and continuing to increase its user base.

SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

Strengths:

• Where Ya Travelin? is a unique model that provides great value to merchants and travelers. Any deal combination will render savings to travelers of 5x or more of the service fee paid. And, with no fees to merchants, there is no risk for the free marketing. The Where Ya Travelin? site is simple, easy to use, and approachable enough to appeal to a wide range of travelers. The business model is low cost and scalable.

Weaknesses:

• Where Ya Travelin? is a new, disruptive concept. There are a lot of biases against daily deal sites in the local business communities in which we work that must be overcome for merchant on-boarding. But, once merchants understand the model, their acceptance is high. Similarly, because travelers have not experienced deals in the way presented on Where Ya Travelin? early resources must be focused on marketing, advertising, and user acquisition/education strategies.

Opportunities:

• Where Ya Travelin? has the opportunity to become the one-stop, go-to destination for money-saving trip activity deals, tourist itinerary planning, and local business-to-tourist target marketing. In addition, we have identified opportunities to provide deals to users through travel sites (e.g., present deals to travelers who have booked flights or hotel rooms) and to hotel concierges (e.g., providing deals and discounts that concierges can distribute to guests).

Threats:

• One of the biggest challenges for Where Ya Travelin? is brand recognition and user acquisition. Any number of existing players in the travel and/or deal space could devote resources to develop a similar concept.

Who advised you your idea isn’t going to be successful and why didn’t you listen to them?

A successful entrepreneur insisted that the Where Ya Travelin? model should be flipped – that merchants should pay and not travelers, because travelers will never “pay to save”.

With several weeks of merchant outreach, the message we received was loud and clear: merchants love the idea of no-to-low cost marketing through coupons.

There is so much resistance to daily deal sites, fees, and back-end deals that merchants anticipate that all online solutions will be a bad deal for them. The bottom line is that if we charged a fee to merchants out of the gate, we would have 0 deals.

On the traveller side, there are a number of proven models in which consumers will pay to save. “Entertainment” books have provided consumers with local print coupons for years. Similar types of local and specialty coupon companies have also moved into the space.

Based on these models, we remained faithful to the notion that, if the value is presented, users will pay a nominal fee to save time and money.

What is your success metric 12 months from now?

Alive and kickin’ with enough revenue to keep the lights on, the user base growing, and the offerings improving.

NB: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.

The price comparison specialist, which acquired 51% of Local Daily Deals for an initial consideration of £1 million, has already rebranded the Brighton-based service to MoneySupermarket Local Deals.

The deal could increase to £11 million depending on financial targets being met in the next three years.

Mark Guymer, MoneySupermarket’s shopping, vouchers and partnerships boss, describes the deal as another good example of the company’s activity beyond product comparison following the company’s roll out of vouchers across its various verticals.

“Customers really like the deals proposition and it naturally sits with the MoneySupermarket proposition of getting more for their money.

“We have the relationship with all the major providers of travel inventory so it’s relatively straightforward for us to go in and leverage that.”

Guymer says TravelSupermarket currently promotes top deals but has no flash sales element.

He also says the company is only at the ‘launch stage of the deals proposition’ and currently extending it into big cities such as Manchester and Birmingham, after going live about five weeks ago.

Google Offers is becoming a deals aggregator and expanding its roster of vacations, tours and activities by striking partnerships with Zozi andRearden Commerce, among others.

Do you want a five-night vacation in Mexico? Google offers was touting such a stay to Oakland, Calif., email subscribers via a flash sales deal sourced from Rearden Commerce’s HomeRun platform.

In San Francisco, Google Offers featured a 50% off deal on a $200 bartending class provided by tours and activities platform Zozi.

The sourcing from HomeRun.com and Zozi are part of a slew of partnerships Google announced today as it scales up its flash-sales deals business. Other new partners include Dealfind, DoodleDeals, Gilt City, GolfNow, Juice in the City, kgbdeals, Mamapedia, Plum District, PopSugar Shop, ReachDeals, Active.com, Schwaggle and TIPPR.

Google Offers is now available in 17 US cities — with more on the way — as it seeks to compete with Groupon and others.

The plan is to customize the offers as much as possible as Google Offers says it is introducing a personalization quiz for subscribers.

Google’s blog post says:

You can tell us what categories you’re interested in and where you hang out so we can send you just the tailored offers that match your interests—all in one email. If you’re not the outdoorsy type or interested in cosmetic treatments, then we won’t send you deals for zipline adventures and laser hair removal. Don’t worry, if your interests change you can always update your preferences.

To be sure, despite its new deals aggregation initiative, Google Offers is still sending out its own salespeople and notching many of these agreements with local merchants on its own.

For example, Google Offers itself is the provider of this $30 deal to purchase a $300 credit toward a vacation from JetBlue Getaways.

So, who handles the customer service issues for Google Offers when they are sourced by Google or third-party vendors?

The only phone numbers listed on Google Offers are those of the merchants themselves.

Google Offers does have a Business Help section. Vendors can fill out forms and exchange emails with support.

In discussing its new partnership with Google Offers, Rearden Commerce’s Deem Blog  acknowledges “doubts about the industry’s vitality,” but argues that the “opportunities persist” to turn around the deals space by providing merchant value and relevance.

The Deem blog post, authored by Brad Brodigan, president of merchant offers at Rearden, states:

Taking advantage of situational changes and perishable inventory creates huge opportunities for merchant success while providing real benefit to the consumer. For example, if a consumer’s flight is delayed past the time that public transit runs, offering a car service could produce a win for the service and ensure that the consumer gets home quickly, conveniently, and safely – merchant value, and relevance.

 

 

With the just-launched American Express Link, Like, Love deals platform on Facebook, cardmembers link their American Express cards to the programs and get served up deals based in part on their Facebook “likes” and the “likes” of friends in their network.

And, instead of purchasing prepaid vouchers, cardmembers pay for a service or product up-front and then receive a discount in the form of statement credit.

And, despite American Express’ statements about the benefits of its program over voucher-based deals, actually there is little in common between the divergent models.

With details about the model rolling in, the American Express deals platform is undoubtedly much more supplier-friendly than the flash sales norm.

But, will it have comparable consumer sizzle?

For example, Westin and Sheraton hotels are each offering American Express cardholders $40 statement credits after they spend $100 or more for hotel stays at properties in North America. Each brand is offering the credits on 1,000 stays; the statement credits appear 3-5 days after the cardmember’s spending, says Starwood spokeswoman Jennifer Leemann.

And, Travelocity yesterday began offering 20% off hotel bookings of $350 or more, says spokesman Joel Frey. Consumers pay the full room rate up-front and get the statement credit on their next statement.

The Travelocity offer runs through Aug. 31.

Meanwhile, Celebrity Cruises was busy in the Amex deals platform offering a $600 credit after spending $2,000 or more. Now, that’s some meaningful bucks coming back to the cruiser.

American Express is making a point of these offers being “exclusive coupon-less deals” with unstated comparisons to the voucher programs of Groupon, LivingSocial and Google Offers coming to mind.

“American Express will send statement credits to cardmembers’ accounts as they shop online or in stores, without the need to pre-purchase anything, print out or show a coupon at the point of sale,” American Express states.

If the Westin, Sheraton and Travelocity deals are representative, the types of Link, Like, Love deals under discussion don’t appear to offer the steep discounts that Groupon and others promote with their prepaid vouchers,  and the American Express “coupon-less”offers require consumers to spend more money up-front and then wait for credits.

From a supplier standpoint, the American Express program is much more vendor-friendly than Groupon-like programs, which generally take a 50% revenue share.

In fact, Leemann of Starwood says “there is no revenue share component,” and unlike flash sales, there is “no expiration date.”

American Express presumably makes its money on new card enrollments, merchant fees and promotions.

In addition, the American Express deals platform currently partners with national brands and not local mom-and-pop restaurants and activities providers which are the mainstay of flash sales providers.

Merchants offer the deals  using American Express’ Smart Offer APIs, which also provide analytics on deal redemption and customer loyalty so merchants can fine-tune their digital marketing, American Express says.

Using the Facebook social graph, American Express also will serve deal participants with Membership Rewards offers as well as other promotional initiatives, the company says.

American Express simultaneously announced it intends to roll out a Go Social marketing tool which will enable companies to serve up deals to cardmembers on their mobile devices.

With the deals space evolving, many companies are willing to experiment with divergent models.

That’s the case with Virgin America, which sold out a Groupon in Chicago in less than eight minutes in February.

Abby Lunardini, a Virgin America spokeswoman, says the airline sees “some interesting potential” in the American Express deals platform “especially given the share-ability and we’re eager to see how consumers respond.”

Virgin America is an American Express launch partner, although it doesn’t intend to offer a deal through the American Express platform until later in the Summer, Lunardini says.

“Groupon has a specific and highly successful approach too — and we’ve seen some incredible and concrete results with it,” Lunardini says, referring to the Chicago sale.

Lunardini adds: “With the social and online options for consumers expanding so quickly, we are seeing potential in a lot of different spaces and as young airlines based here in Silicon Valley, we’re always eager to explore new models.”

The deals publisher will launch the application on the Apple device in the US in the coming weeks, with a a UK-targeted version expected over the course of the next three months.

The company’s suite of existing products will be included in the app, but more importantly will use the GPS capability within the user’s handset to serve relevant deals to a particular location.

A mobile web-friendly version of the existing website will be rolled out beforehand, while an Android version of he app is also expected at some point.

Here’s an early look at the app ahead of it appearing in the iTunes appstore over the course of the next few weeks:

Travelzoo reckons around 10% of its total traffic is currently coming from mobile devices, so rolling out the mobile version of the website and launching apps makes sense for a brand beginning to see the benefit of heading into location-based, hyper-local deals.

UK managing director Joel Brandon-Bravo says:

“The most important thing the app does is let people find deals near them, be it restaurants, hotels, spas etc. They can also redeem their local deals on the phone rather than a piece of paper so less chance of losing vouchers or worrying about printing them off.

“So, imagine you arrive in New York from London, you really could pull up the Travelzoo app and find we have a deal at the cool Thompson Hotel Gild Hall, a top end restaurant deal and an activity, like a cruise out to the Statue of Liberty and plan your day around the amazing deals close by.”

Features created specifically for the mobile app include a photo mosaic of available deals in a particular location as well as Deals on Map, Deals Near Me and Deal Roller.

Brandon-Bravo says a number of other features exclusive to the app will be added in further updates. The app will also be modified for other countries and languages and launched in Travelzoo’s existing markets in due course.

US-based LivingSocial, one of the deal sites-of-the-moment alongside Groupon, launched its travel-oriented vertical LivingSocial Escapes in December 2010.

The official LivingSocial proposition is around offering deals on hand-picked travel “adventures”, claiming it compliments Facebook’s place to share experiences with its own platform of where to discover and buy similar experiences.

We managed to grab some time recently with Doug Miller, SVP for new business initiatives at LivingSocial.

Here follows a Q&A with Miller where he discusses latest trends in the deal marketplace, the focus of the travel vertical, core audience and other issues.

Can you elaborate on the latest trends for both group buying and flash sales in the travel industry?

The overall trend starts with a very simple idea: creating travel demand.  As travellers, we all get excited about watching Anthony Bourdain on the Travel Channel, reading glossy travel magazines or hearing amazing weekend getaway stories shared by friends. These travel stories inspire us, but often pass by without action since there’s no simple way to buy in the moment of inspiration.

The social commerce movement fills a gap in travel discovery and buying. It champions evocative travel stories and pairs these stories with transactional “buy” buttons like never before.

At LivingSocial Escapes, we set out to inspire travel buying. We don’t categorise what we’re doing as “group buying,” and the term “flash sale” only just begins to describe the bigger merchandising and marketing idea here.  If Facebook is where people share experiences, LivingSocial is where people discover and buy experiences.

Can you highlight salient features of group buying in terms of how it works? What is the potential as a viable distribution channel?

Escapes partners report selling as many room nights in a week with Escapes as they’ve sold all year with an OTA partner.  This includes vacation destination & ski resorts, city-market properties, casino hotels and independents.  The model is viable.  It will change hotel distribution going forward.  It’s on-demand distribution for an increasingly on-demand world.

It’s also notable that the social commerce model comes with unambiguous marketing benefits.  Escapes pages link directly to hotel websites, by design.  We want to create direct engagement between consumers and hotels.  We want travellers to engage with hotel brands, hotel videos, hotel content… hotel stories.

Moreover, our voucher-based redemption model drives all reservations through the hotels directly.  Enterprising partners report more than doubling their revenues before travellers arrive because unlike other online travel distribution, they own and control the opportunity to upsell at the time of reservation, and for the weeks leading up to the traveller’s arrival on property.

Outline a few tips for any hotel company that it is focusing on group buying and flash sales?

• Expect a win-win-win philosophy from your social or flash commerce partner.  There are three parties involved in every successful Escapes offer.  There’s the hotel, LivingSocial and the traveller.  We think it’s really important for the long-term health of this business that any deal should work for all three parties involved.  We want to build win-win-win outcomes.
• Require a level of travel industry sophistication from your social or flash commerce partner.  It takes a level of travel industry sophistication and creativity to get this right.  That’s why LivingSocial brought in a team with extensive travel industry experience to launch Escapes.  Travel is an intrinsic part of the culture of LivingSocial.
• Stay in control of the opportunity to upsell premium room types or cross-sell amenities through your reservation desk. This early engagement with your customers is not possible with all social and flash commerce sites.

It turns out that many Escapes hotel partners find customers really excited and ready to further upgrade their experience when making the reservations with their LivingSocial voucher.  Thanks to the voucher’s “trip-in-a-box” savings, travellers are free to immediately add a few personal touches to their getaway.

LivingSocial offers daily deals on handpicked experiences that can be shared with friends. Which areas are you trying to address through your venture considering that consumers are overwhelmed by the research and decision process in the travel sector?

Imagine the ease of shopping a boutique retailer with a small collection of handpicked goods.  The store is inviting, approachable and designed with the idea that less is more. Then, imagine that boutique has the capacity to invite 40+ million people each day.

We are not creating a comprehensive directory and jamming it full of every possible travel option.  We do not want to overwhelm with choice.  Rather, we feature one or two exciting nearcation options and select destination trips.  We go deep in telling the story of places and properties, and why they’re special.

To make the process of buying even easier, each Escape is also a “trip-in-a-box”, filled with fun. Working with our hotel partners and our local staff, who are on the ground in over 300 markets around the world, we design just the right combination of amenities and experiences to make buying a quick getaway exciting and easy.  The “trip-in-a-box” approach reduces consumer stress and planning fatigue.

The approach seems to be working: a surprisingly large percentage of LivingSocial Escapes are bought within just a few minutes of opening our emails.  Again, it is our goal to publish trip ideas worthy of sharing with friends, spark the imagination of travellers and create demand.

Can you describe your core audience?  Can you explain the preferences in terms of travel planning and also buying behaviour of your core audience?

The Nielsen Company recently reported LivingSocial audience numbers that prompted one reporter to write that our customers are “younger, richer and smarter” than our nearest competitor [Groupon].

That said, I think what’s most interesting about our audience is their mindset.  They are sociable and adventurous.  They like to try new things, they’re curious about the new and unconventional, and they like to convince others to try new things as well.  The LivingSocial customer wants to get out from behind the screen and experience the world.

LivingSocial is also much more than just a travel business. Our audience demonstrates uncharacteristically high levels of daily engagement with our site relative to an OTA, or other travel vertical flash sale sites.

The LivingSocial customer checks in regularly on local deals, finds lunch with LivingSocial Instant on their iPhone, and shares offers on Facebook.  Escapes travel partners benefit from this heavy daily engagement.  We’ve sold over 400k room nights for about 400 properties since launching just months ago.

As far as buying behavior among our members, we see a reverse bell curve in purchase patterns meaning people open/buy as soon as the email hits on Wednesday, then there is a dip while people plan with families and friends, and then there is another spike near the end of the week that the deal is live.  Moreover, Escapes partners report that they see huge spikes in their website traffic during the period their deal is live.

The concept of flash sales is gaining traction in the travel industry. For consumers, flash sale sites are becoming increasingly popular because they’re an attractive way to access overstocked inventory, or to get introduced to new offerings. How do you expect this concept to shape up going forward?

The trend toward social buying and flash sales will change and influence both travel media and travel distribution going forward.  One partner recently said to me: “If you had told me I could get my hotel in front of over 20 million, and get more than 800 new customers in ten hours, and do all of that with no upfront cost, I would have told you were crazy. Where else am I going to do that?”

Enough said.

The travel industry has witnessed several new initiatives related to group travel. How do you assess the maturity level of group buying in the travel sector?

I think we are just scratching the surface and there’s considerable innovation ahead.

The field of travel social and flash commerce sites will grow, and clear differences will emerge.  Some will bring travel industry expertise into the heart of the company, and some will outsource it.  Some will create demand and inspire travel, and some will simply push deals on unsold rooms.  Some will build a global audience, and some will focus on a select segment.

In general, the concept of social or flash commerce works for travel.  It’s highly measurable and performance oriented.  You don’t pay for impressions.  You don’t pay for clicks.  You pay for heads in beds and butts in seats.

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

It starts with our experienced team in the field, a team with deep travel and media backgrounds.  They work with each individual property to develop ideas and packages.  We do not believe in a “one size fits all” approach.

After an Escape idea has been crafted, we have an in-house editorial and design team that works with our partners to develop an offer page.  The page presents the partner’s story using rich copy, imagery and video.  Once each week, we published a collection of Escapes including both nearcation and destination trips, and our offers typically run for 7-days.

Importantly, LivingSocial’s members subscribe for email or mobile alerts from a home market.  That means we can intelligently feature Napa getaways to members in the San Francisco Bay, promote Hawaii in key West Coast feeder markets, and Puerto Rico in New York.

Of course, discovery of these deals is not limited to these markets as we’ve seen plenty of Napa Escapes purchased by our members around the world.  Sometimes an escape means going a little further away so escapes.livingsocial.com is designed to encourage discovery of our entire collection – from near to far – each week.

How do you think hotels can play their part in terms of making the offers attractive?

The experiential “trip-in-a-box” approach is really important to the success of an Escapes offer.  When developing these packages, we welcome creative ideas as we want to excite and inspire travel. One Escapes partner in Banff included an ice-walking adventure, a small property in Vermont included cooking classes, in Oregon a resort included a whiskey tasting experience, and in Arizona a partner included tickets to the family water park.

The more value included in an Escape, the more attractive it becomes to the consumer.  Properties that leverage other amenities such as an onsite spa or restaurant tend to run more successful Escapes than those who offer accommodations only.  Of course, packaging also helps to protect rate integrity.

NB: This is a guest article by Marco Saio, global events director at EyeforTravel.

NB2: Miller is scheduled to speak at the forthcoming Travel Distribution Summit North America 2011 in Las Vegas (19-20 September) this year.

You may recall that Travelzoo — as distinct from Travelzoo Asia Pacific — is a publicly traded company controlled by founder Ralph Bartel.

And, Travelzoo in 2009 sold its Asia Pacific businesses to Azzurro Capital, which is owned by Bartel.

The transaction enabled Travelzoo to get the losses stemming from Asia Pacific growing pains off its books. And Travelzoo, which has a licensing and hosting agreement with Travelzoo Asia Pacific, has the option to buy the assests of the businesses in Australia, China, Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan in June any year in the 2011 to 2020 period.

So now Travelzoo Asia Pacific is growing, although bottom line figures are being held close to Bartel’s vest.

“With more than 3 million loyal subscribers, Travelzoo [my italics] has established one of the most trusted and distributed travel and entertainment deal publications in Asia Pacific,” says Jason Yap, the CEO of Travelzoo Asia Pacific.

In addition to publishing the Top 20 newsletter in Australia, China, Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan, Travelzoo Asia Pacific also pubishes a Top 20 Asian Edition for English speakers across the region.

With the Travelzoo brand making headway across Asia Pacific, it isn’t surprising that over the last couple of days shares of New York City-headquartered Travelzoo have benefited from Travelzoo Asia Pacific’s subscriber growth over.

However, it’s probably too soon to tell how the Japan earthquake-tsunami-nuclear crisis will impact subscriber growth in Top 20 Japan and elsewhere in the region.

Travelzoo Asia Pacific’s 3 million Top 20 subscribers compare with Travelzoo’s 4,472,000 in Europe and 13,594,000 in North America.

Unveiled last week, coupons from the likes of hotels, activities and other services are now starting to appear on Google Maps this week, concentrated in major city areas in the US.

Search results for hotel-related Google Offers throws up plenty more results, with deals available outside of the US including India, Italy, Thailand and Vietnam.

Clicking on one of the offers sends the user through to to a dedicated page with details about the property or service, including a map, link to the supplier website and printing options.

Why is printing so important? The offer comes in the form of a old school cut out coupon, complete with dotted line. The discount code is also included, presumably for quoting to a call centre or entering in the discount field on the supplier’s website.

Here is an example of a hotel deal in San Diego, but doesn’t include much information about the offer:

An example of an activity offer:

And this from a hotel in Seattle, complete with multiple and specific offers and descriptions:

The question now will be to what extent travel suppliers will embrace Google Offers. Groupon has made an enormous splash in the local deals marketplace, with Travelzoo also getting in on the act.

But some are unsure over the value of working with such a model in the medium to long term, although some short term benefits around distressed inventory are what many organisations are currently doing.

Of course the entire thing could be just a simple ramping up of the old coupons system from Google, rather than the new Offers system – although the terminology being used could do with some explanation on the site.

The coupons here are non-transactional, meaning that they are more traditional pre-paid vouchers rather than the group and social buy associated with Groupons.

Watch this space…

Google Offers screenshot (via @Mashable)

Google says it is working on what is effectively a Groupon copy, a model where registered users are notified of a daily or weekly deal, based on their location.

The concept is not particularly new, but Groupon’s extraordinary growth rate during 2010 has triggered a frenzy of copycats of its own, with perhaps Travelzoo the most high profile in the travel sector to get involved, initially in the US and now the UK.

Destination-specific deals, such as restaurant, activities, tours and hotel extras, seem to be the mainstay of travel-related products running such services at the moment.

Groupon is not without its detractors in the travel industry, most notably in a recent Tnooz article by Stephen Joyce who raised a sceptical eyebrow as to the benefit to the industry of using the local deals model. Others, however, do see some tangible uses for travel brands.

But now Google wants to get in on the act… again.

The deals through Google Offers have a limited shelf-life (as the picture above indicates) and lead users to a Buy Now section, presumably on the supplier’s site.

The move has clearly been in the offing for a fair amount of time (such a service requires the creation of sales teams, for a start) but it also casts a sceptical light of recent and fevered speculation that Google was willing to splash out $6 billion to buy Groupon.

A Google official says it is talking to small businesses to “enlist their support and participation” in a test of Google Offers, a product it confirms is only a “pre-paid offers/vouchers program”.

“This initiative is part of an ongoing effort at Google to make new products, such as the recent Offer Ads beta, that connect businesses with customers in new ways. We do not have more details to share at this time, but will keep you posted.”

Inevitably there is little else to see at this stage how Google Offers will work – question marks will emerge around customer service, geography, types of products Google is targeting, etc.

And while some think there could be room for Groupon, LivingSocial et al, with the travel-focused Travelzoo, to exist happily alongside Google Offers, the search giant’s move does one of two things: legitimises (in terms of profile, not law) the local deals model further, while probably making those thinking of “Groupon killers” of their own to think again.

Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?

Touristaz.com is a social travel deals site that helps travelers combine collective knowledge and buying power to make informed travel decisions and save money.

The company develops technologies that facilitate the sharing of budget-related travel data and a platform for processing supply-side and demand-side travel deals.

Eric Willis and Tryiokasus Brown are the co-founders.

Eric Willis is a software developer, entrepreneur, and businessman who likes to disrupt the marketplace with ideas that change the way people use the web.

His primary responsibility will be driving the company vision and assembling a passionate team to realize that vision. Speaks English, Portuguese, Spanish, and little Arabic and is passionate about online travel.

What financial support did you have to launch the business?

The company is completely self-funded. We have invested a significant amount from savings and will continue to do so for the short-term.

Although we could probably raise a small round, we thought it would be more advantageous for us to keep the team small, focus on our core products, and get to launch.

Raising outside funds was not necessary to get us to that point. We plan to bootstrap unless it makes sense to raise capital.

What problem are you trying to solve?

There is a lot of noise in the daily-deal space. The main complaint about sites like Groupon and the rest of the clones is that they do not offer the types of deals that many people desire as they tend to be primarily focused on restaurant and spa deals.

We plan to solve the problem (in the travel space) by providing a demand-side solution. We will offer users the ability to express exactly the type of deal they desire, join like-minded buyers, and then aggregate their purchasing power to negotiation a group discount.

We will then supply the deal to them that best meets their requirements. We believe it will be a win-win situation for all parties.

Describe the business, core products and services?

We provide a social platform for users to receive group discounts on travel-related teals.

Touristaz aggregates like-minded travelers and connectes them with deals from property owners, tour operators and other travel -related companies.

Touristaz uses group-buying technology that aggregates deals from property owners, tour operators and travel retailers and offers them to our users at discounts of up to 90% off.

Who are your key customers and users at launch?

Our key customers are savvy travelers who use the web for deals. However, we also cater to travel providers who provide the various travel-related services to our users

Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?

As we have not used any outside funding, that was not necessary. However, we have validated the idea with real users and real partners.

What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?

Our business model is rather straight-forward. We deliver value through the entire chain and we will take a percentage on sales procured by our system.

Our fee may range from 10-50% percent depending on various criteria. It is a performance-based system that is risk-free for our partners.

However, it is lucrative for our company as we have very little overhead and we also take in cash before paying our partners.

SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

Strengths:

• Technology – we have developed a sound platform that was built to scale.
• Partners –  we have partnered with some very strong travel companies in our initial geographic market.
• Margins – we have a high margin business with great cash flow which will allow us to be very aggressive after our full launch.

Weakness:

• Marketing – as we have not attempted to raise outside funding, we will lack the initial budget to commit to a large scale advertising campaign to attract new users.
• Staff – we may be understaffed the first few months as we work on growing the userbase. This could result in missed market opportunities.

Threats:

• Our biggest threat at the start is going to be the user base. We will need to get to critical mass. These types of applications are completely dependent on the network effect in that value of a product or service increases as more people use it. So a majority of our resources will be devoted to marketing and advertising efforts to get travelers using the system.
• Also, there will be the immediate threat of more established online travel companies with large user bases encroaching on our market.

Who advised you your idea isn’t going to be successful and why didn’t you listen to them?

We did not seek out any third-party advice (beyond users and partners) on whether this could be successful or not.

We simply continued to refine the idea and attempted to remove every possible point of failure. We are comfortable with the idea of failing and not guided by the fear of it.

Many great companies failed before morphing into their current forms.

What is your success metric 12 months from now?

We have set an internal goal of attracting one million registered users after one year of operations and at least a run-rate of $1 million in quarterly sales.

NB: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.

In releasing its third quarter 2010 earnings results, the newsletter and online deal-publisher said it notched an operating profit of $248,000 in Europe, compared with a $1.3 million loss in the third quarter of 2009.

Segment revenue in Europe climbed 37% to $6.5 million in the quarter, although it still is small when measured against Travelzoo’s North America business, where revenue grew 12% to $21.3 million.

Overall for the company, Travelzoo recorded net income of $3.65 million in the third quarter of 2010, compared with a $295,000 loss in the year-earlier period, on $27.7 million in revenue, a 17% year over year jump.

Travelzoo began operating in Europe in 2005 and now has a presence in the U.K., Spain, Germany and France. The company previously achieved profitability in the U.K., but this is the first time Travelzoo has gone into the black for Europe as a whole.

In other highlights of Travelzoo’s earnings release, the company said it has seen “rapid adoption” of its Local Deals business.

Travelzoo said its Local Deals emails, such as the above email for New York City,  now are being published in 12 U.S. cities.

Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?

TripAlertz provides travelers epic savings for premium getaways through the power of collective buying.

Its prices are often 30-50% lower than the leading online travel sites, since TripAlertz is a private sale, members-only distribution channel, which uses the combined purchasing power of our members to negotiate exceptional deals.

TripAlertz has a team of 20+ people launching its product including:

• Founder, Brendan Murphy (former VP sales and marketing for American Express Travel Affiliate)
• Executive chairman, Mark Donohue (former founder and chairman of Expansion Capital Partners, current Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Babson College)
• VP supplier relations, Jeff Horch (former vice president at Travelport).

The team has hundreds of years of combined travel and technology experience.

What financial support did you have to launch the business?

TripAlertz is backed by Conscious Living Ventures and several wealthy angel entrepreneurs. TripAlertz is currently in talks with several leading venture capital institutions to raise Series A financing.

What problem are you trying to solve?

For travelers, TripAlertz is the best online destination for impulse getaways priced 30-50% below the leading online travel sites. Travelers receive pricing they would not receive on their own through the power of collective buying.

For travel suppliers, TripAlertz answers the question “How do you sell more travel products and experiences through social media, while also protecting your brand and existing distribution channels?”

Describe the business, core products and services?

TripAlertz is the perfect online destination for travelers looking for an impulse getaway at the guaranteed lowest price.

The site features premium hotels & resorts in the most popular destinations. Some of our current launch partners include the Trump International Beach Resort in Sunny Isles, FL, The Atlantic Hotel in Ft. Lauderdale, El Cid Beach Resort in Riviera Maya, Parc 55 Wyndham in San Francisco, and the Crescent Hotel in Beverly Hills.

On the site, members can submit creative trip ideas, vote on their favorite deals, work together to receive epic savings, and collaborate before they travel to receive the absolute best advice on what to do when they arrive.

Who are your key customers and users at launch?

Initial members of TripAlertz are trendsetting users of social media who understand the value of our travel experiences.

Key travel supplier customers are 4- and 5-star hotels and resorts in the most popular travel destinations.

Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?

Founder Brendan Murphy developed the concept several months before Groupon and Jetsetter were launched. After nine months of Groupon and Jetsetter operating, investment capital was raised as TripAlertz provides several advantages over those successful sites.

What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?

TripAlertz takes a cut of each sale transacted on the site. The site also generates revenue through advertising and several affiliate marketing programs.

SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

Strengths:

• Patent pending social media marketing application
• First to offer collective buying with focus on travel industry
• Private distribution channel
• Pre-trip collaboration provides members best-in-class travel advice.

Weaknesses:

• Modestly financed compared to many of the multi-billion dollar leading online travel sites.

Opportunities:

• Chance to take a cut of one of the largest markets in the world by reshaping the online travel experience to reflect the trends of today’s social world.
• Chance to reshape “green travel.”

Threats

• Entering one of the most competitive and dynamic markets in the world.

Who advised you your idea isn’t going to be successful and why didn’t you listen to them?

With true innovation there are always people that doubt you. If you have a dream, you must commit, recommit, and always remember that the journey is more important than the destination.

What is your success metric 12 months from now?

TripAlertz wants to have more than 250,000 members 12 months from now, along with a steady stream of world-class deals from some of the most prestigious travel suppliers in the world.

NB: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.

The company gave its flagship US business first try with the new look in late-June this year after finally disclosing the long awaited changes to its online offering would be made just a few weeks before.

Recently installed chief executive Chris Loughlin says the changes to the UK site will be rolled out across its other country sites, including Australia, Canada, China and Spain in due course.

The next site on the roadmap is expected to be Germany in a few weeks.

The new websites feature a cleaner, open feel, are 1024 pixels wide, compared with the former version, which was 800 pixels by 600 pixels.

Instead of the existing Cheap Flights, Holiday Deals and Cruise Deals heading three busy-looking columns, the redesigned homepage has a Find Deals section in the middle section of the page with new search functionality, enabling consumers to search by destination, keyword and deal locator.

Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?

Over a backpacking career spanning close to seven years Kevin Lippy had been directly responsible for… not much really, and was more than content with simply being well-traveled. That was until one day when his promising backpacking days came crashing down in one foul swoop when he ran out of money and had no other choice but to go home!

He had officially become a “brokepacker”. Kevin simply knew that he had to do more to help save other backpackers from suffering the same fate as he did.

So he founded Brokepacker, a website purely dedicated to offering the greatest discounts and deals on backpacker accommodation, travel and transport.

A short time later, fellow Brokepacker Dean Ginsberg who has experience in digital marketing, business development, strategy and design, returned home in dire need of a job to repay his backpacking debts.

As Brokepackers, Kevin and Dean both truly understand how much backpackers value discounts, because every single dollar saved is a dollar that can contribute to another experience, another adventure and ultimately another day.

What financial support did you have to launch the business?

We are self-financed. We just tell people that our staple diet of noodles and tomato sauce is part of our strategy to delve into the mindset and psyche of our backpacker target audience.

What problem are you trying to solve?

For backpackers we live by our company motto: Saving You From Home.

For operators:

Having to contend with seasonal demand and volatile fluctuations in backpacker numbers, the majority of operators in the backpacking industry have some unused capacity (distressed stock) during most months of the year.

Brokepacker allows these operators to offload a limited amount of their unutilized inventory at a discounted rate.

Another issue is that the backpacking industry is made up of thousands of small independent operators, the majority of which do not have the brand awareness or marketing budgets to promote themselves on any other points besides price.

Brokepacker serves as more than just a booking engine for these operators as it essentially provides an affordable marketing solution where they can inexpensively differentiate the products and services they offer.

Describe the business, core products and services?

Brokepacker utilises its own purpose built pricing model (Innovation Patent Application 201000090) to distribute the discounts it offers, which are bundled together into ‘deal sets’ and are available on a first come, first served basis.

The discounts are distributed so that:

• No discounts on Brokepacker are less than 25% off – we believe anything less is not a big enough call to action, especially as we generally sell low ticket items.
• All discounts within a deal set are distributed unevenly to allow for some significant teaser discounts which offer as much as 70% off.

Part of our value proposition is that once all the individual discounts within a deal set are sold out, the product/ service can then be purchased at the market rate.

This can either be booked directly through brokepacker.com or by linking a user to the operators own booking engine where they can offer more detailed information and receive bookings commission free.

Restricting the amount of discounts offered per listing, allows us to offer the most competitive discounts. It also allows us to incentivise those who get in early as opposed to rewarding those who book late (which is the opposite of what a lot of lastminute-style discounting sites do).

The system is built so that operators can autonomously manage their own deal set listings in line with the amount of distressed capacity they have at any given point in time.

Who are your key customers and users at launch?

Price conscious, potential “brokepackers” age 18-30 wanting to prolong their travels in Australia. In this way the Brokepacker concept is market driven as it appeals to the overwhelming majority of backpackers who are typically and unashamedly frugal as they seek to get the most bang for their (limited) buck.

Did you have customers validate your idea?

Its pretty intuitive that besides sex and beer, discounts are the most sought after commodity by backpackers. So was it entirely necessary for me to move into a backpacker hostel a couple of months prior to our launch to validate this notion? Absolutely!

Sure, at first even I thought I was uneccesary, but in hindsight it was probably the greatest business decision I have made to date. So much so that I haven’t exactly moved out yet.

Living in and amongst real backpackers on ground level has provided me with a level of insight and understanding about my target market that far outweighs anything I could have possibly achieved from sitting in an office behind a desktop.

It’s also pretty handy for sales leads and spreading the word of mouth about the project, which is great considering it will take some time to get substantial online traction. At times it does prove to be difficult environment to run a business (so I do go home occasionally).

The most interesting thing I have learned so far is that a significant portion of backpackers are equally appreciative when it comes to “value-adding” as they are with discounting.

In this way we are continually seeking to adapt our strategy to not only offer distressed stock at reduced prices but also to offer value-adding products.

What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?

Brokepacker’s primary source of revenue is commissions earned from deal sets sold. Being that it is free to list on Brokepacker, our model is based on the premise that we only make money once the businesses that list with us make money.

We also promote listings that do not do not utilise our pricing model. These may include operators who want to advertise their own special deals or certain types of operators who simply do not fit our pricing model, an example being backpacker bars.

We also run marketing and social media based campaigns through brokepacker.com on behalf of operators on an ad-hoc basis.

SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

Strengths:

• Brokepacker is first to market as a website purely focused on deals and discounts in the Australian backpacking industry. Our custom built pricing model and unique system design was built with simplicity and automation in mind. Brokepacker’s marketing strategies are more targeted to a younger, more social and web-savvy 18‐30 year old independent backpacker audience. Being on ground level amongst backpackers provides us with a unique edge to directly reach our audience

Weaknesses:

• We are a small team with minimal start up capital. We truly see this as more of a challenge then a weakness as we have to be extremely scrupulous with every single dollar of our marketing spend. We simply cannot afford to be reckless at this stage and need to be creative in our promotional strategy. The good news is that we wholeheartedly believe that it is now easier than ever to reach our audience without requiring a prohibitively massive capital base.

Opportunities:

• At present there is no website in the industry that acts a one-stop-shop for a backpacker’s every need including accommodation, activities, tours and transport. The hostel segment is covered (i.e. Hostelworld, Hostelbookers) but in terms of booking tours, travel packages and car rentals as well, you still need to navigate through numerous individual websites. Brokepacker bridges this gap, by allowing all segments of the backpacking industry to list.

Threats:

• Discounting in the backpacker accommodation sector is a widely debated topic in our industry, and there are a faction of operators who believe that any type of discounting is bad news because it drives down yields and consequently hampers product development and inward investment. We need to disassociate from being irrational discounters and let the market know that we provide a solution for operators to sell there excess capacity as opposed to their entire capacity at a discounted rate.

Who advised you your idea isn’t going to be successful and why didn’t you listen to them?

Nobody has ever categorically stated that Brokepacker would not be successful; however if someone ever did then the last thing we would do is not listen to them.

We would want to understand exactly why they held this belief and on what specific grounds do they think that the idea is going to fail?

We would then thoroughly assess their point of view and if there is any merit whatsoever in their argument we’d do whatever was necessary to mitigate those reasons. We are never too proud to learn, fairly flexible and constantly adapting our strategy.

What is your success metric 12 months from now?

If in 12 months from now we could walk into any backpacker internet terminal along the east coast of Australia and have a good chance of seeing someone on Brokepacker we will be over the moon.

No doubt this will certainly be a challenge considering how transient our target market is – after all the average backpacker comes to Australia for under two months.

Achieving that amount of market recognition and brand awareness will require the continual engagement of new backpackers through word of mouth referrals.

Another success metric will be defined by the amount of operators we have listed on Brokepacker, as we will only increase this in line with demand.

TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.

More from Travelzoo as it starts to overhaul its online presence and face challenges from new distribution channels.

The travel deals publisher says it is committed to its popular and long-running weekly Top 20 email bulletin despite the rapid rise of social networks as primary communication channels.

“I do not see anything on the horizon yet that suggests email is not a brilliant method of reaching our subscribers,” says European managing director Chris Loughlin who takes over as CEO in July 2010.

The company currently has 20 million subscribers around the world to its weekly blast of offers and deals.

But numerous studies have pointed to how email is no longer the automatic gateway to consumers it once was, especially amongst younger web users who have embraced sites such as Facebook as their main method of interacting with each other and brands online.

Loughlin says the company has made a number of efforts this year to push the brand into networks such as Facebook, building up a base of potential customers through Fan Pages.

Heading his discussion at a Travelzoo event in London (and obviously a nice plug for his book) was this extraordinary video outlining why companies of every hue should ignore social media at their peril.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFZ0z5Fm-Ng

NB: Socialnomics on Amazon.

Global travel deals publisher Travelzoo is to relaunch its websites, adding images, guides and social media to the mix.

The redesign will begin on the flagship US site shortly and then extend to its portfolio of country sites around the world.

The process is meant to be part of on ongoing series of improvements to the company’s websites after years without any major design or work on core functionality.

The initial phase will see a larger use of images and social media links for users, as well as content penned by its team of producers sourcing deals for the site and its Top 20 weekly email.

Travelzoo’s metasearch brand Fly.com will also see a stronger position on the new sites.

The move comes as European managing director Chris Loughlin moves stateside to become CEO of the business, taking over from Holger Bartel.

Loughlin concedes the sites need a new look having changed little in the years since the brand started its overseas expansion, beginning in Europe five years ago.

However the simplicity will remain, he says, allowing users to reach deals quickly from the homepage.

The site was recognised by Google in a recent ad campaign for the search giant in the US which named sites for their user-friendliness.

Meanwhile, Loughlin says a recent decision to advertise on UK television – it’s first such high profile marketing effort outside the US – was a success.

During the campaign the 30-second adspots were shown to approximately 25% of the UK TV audence.

The UK version of the site will be fronted by former Lastminute.com managing director, John Bevan, working alongside a a number of other industry veterans from First Choice, JAC Travel, Orbitz Worldwide.

The site works by enticing people to become part of an exclusive club that then receive hand-picked, high-end – four or five-star – deals once a week, similar to the Travelzoo deals model.

The twist with Voyage Prive is that the offers are only available for a limited amount of time (a “flash sale”), usually around five days, and bookings are taken on the site.

Bevan claims Voyage Prive will have around 500,000 members by the end of 2010 in the UK. The mothership in France, where the company launched in 2006, alongside sites in Spain, Italy and most recently in the US have around 3.5 million members.

The deals featured include European city breaks as well as short and long haul holidays – up to 30 a week will be available to members.

Bevan, who joined the company in February 2010 ahead of the launch this week after working for a number of other sites as a non-executive director and consultant, defends the walled garden approach taken by Voyage Prive, potentially missing out on random search traffic.

The idea is for users to recommend the site and free membership to like-minded friends, family and colleagues, ensuring the quality of the audience for suppliers is not diluted, he says.

Bevan says the site currently has 85,000 members in the UK, built mainly through direct online marketing rather than buying lists.