Passport Online Inc. Selects Travika for Global Hotel and Resort Sales, Marketing and Representation

Posted in: News by Travika on October 28, 2010

Industry leader Passport Online, Inc.’s ResortPort provides resorts access to key consortia, retail agencies and professional home based agent networks and their customers

Scottsdale, Ariz. (October 27^th, 2010):  Travika, a leading sales, marketing and representation service provider for travel related companies announced that it has been selected by Passport Online to assist in the marketing and sales of its ResortPort product line. ResortPort provides online marketing tools for hotels and resorts reaching leading retail agencies, consortia and professional home based networks.

Passport Online has been in operation for 15 years and assists agencies with a suite of emarketing and ecommerce solutions for leisure travel.  Passport Online’s reach via travel agent extranets and travel agency consumer websites includes more than 25,000 agents and 4,000 unique consumer-facing travel agency websites. Consortia partnerships include Vacation.com, American Express Representative Network, Travel Leaders, Ensemble Travel Group, TRAVELSAVERS, NEST, MAST, and others. Among its agency clients, Passport touts top-100 travel agencies including: Altour, Montrose Travel, SatoTravel, TravelStore, Garber Travel, All About Travel, and several highly successful AAA clubs. Leading host agency relationships include:  Nexion, Travel Planners International, Prestige Travel, Global Travel International, MTravel, and more. Email marketing reach includes an additional 7,000 participating travel agents, reaching 3 million travelers.

“We are very excited to have Travika supporting our ResortPort marketing efforts,” said Greg Kott, President and CEO of Passport Online, Inc.  “ResortPort is the most cost effective solution providing hotels and resorts access to the leading leisure travel agency internal and client facing websites. Over 4,000 unique travel agency websites use Passport Online content and marketing tools to promote leisure travel to millions of travelers. Over the years we have built an impressive distribution channel that today includes more than 25,000 individual travel agents and programs that can engage with millions of unique agency consumers a month.”

Bob Gilbert, CEO of Travika said, “Professional travel agents continue to be the high valued producers of exceptional ADR for the hotel community. Agents provide the highest rated business from any intermediary distribution channel. ResortPort uniquely provides hotels and resorts with a variety of marketing options to place rich media content directly in front of front line agents and their clientele. In addition, ResortPort has a portfolio of value added services that offer hotel brand marketing, detailed hotel information, pricing, hotel and tour operator packages with pricing and booking links plus the option to reach out to millions of clients with agency branded email promotions. Not only is there a direct call to action for the property but we can analyse the activity generated by a specific agency.”

About Travika

Travika is a specialized sales and marketing representation group providing travel industry clients with services and distribution in North America and in over 25 countries. Travika was created in 2001 (previously branded as TravelPIE) by travel, tourism and hospitality executives to create a successful performance based relationship with its clients. Travika develops effective plans to generate incremental business where it can be profitably found. The executives of Travika have all successfully worked in major travel brands and understand leveraging every investment to drive measurable ROI. Travika is a privately held company based in Scottsdale, AZ. For more information please visit www.travika.com

About Passport Online

Passport Online is a leading supplier of emarketing and ecommerce solutions for the leisure travel industry, helping leisure travel suppliers connect with the leading consortia, retail agencies, professional home-based agent networks, and their clients.  Millions of travel agency consumers use Passport Online’s shopping engine on travel agency websites to search for their next vacation experience. Millions more travel agency consumers receive agency-branded email campaigns sent by Passport Online. Passport Online helps resort properties drive their rich media content and promotions through all of these electronic marketing channels.

Passport Online’s key products are VacationPort, NexCite and ResortPort. For more information please contact www.passportonlineinc.com

OTA’s….Gimme That Quick Fix or is it Time For Rehab?

Posted in: Bob's Blog, News by Travika on October 8, 2010

We all know when times get tough the tough get going….with low rates to OTA’s. We saw this back in 2001/2002 and again last year and in to 2010 and continuing. Ultimately, the argument in 2001/2002 was not all about rate but increasingly a concern about losing brand visibility at the expense of building the OTA brand. Oh well, that horse has bolted. Today it’s a question of channel optimization and revenue management (rate optimization).

As we ponder the real cost of doing business with OTA’s we have to address the bigger challenges of guest acquisition, guest loyalty and guest retention. The OTA channel is only one of many channels. It is a short term fix. It’s a “lazy” channel. Lazy, in as far as you offer a deep discounted rate, hope you are competitive and you can pack up shop and go to the beach.

As my old Choice Hotels boss, and segmentation champion, Bob Hazard used to quip..there is not an over supply of rooms there is an under supply of guests! So how do we do that today.

As hoteliers, the longer term goal is more significant. Longer term is about brand building and everything that goes with that. Longer term is about developing a guest acquisition strategy, a strong and innovative guest loyalty program and monitoring your high valued guests to make sure they don’t jump ship.

There is an interesting article in Hotel Interactive by Kristi White, who is Director of Revenue Optimization at TRAVELCLICK, where she lays out the dollars (and perhaps lack of sense) involved in working with OTA’s.

We both reach the same conclusion albeit from different starting points. Who do you want to end up owning the customer? OTA’s or you, the hotelier?

Developing the framework for, and the refining of, an integrated relationship marketing program is essential to successfully owning the customer. (That is, if we can actually use the word “own” anymore). Getting close to your guest, knowing everything about your guest, engaging your guest in a personalized manner, providing them with relevant information in a timely fashion, listening very well to what they are telling you (including Social Media), flagging triggers that may signal you are about to lose a valuable guest…all of these elements today are considered Marketing 101.

It requires smarts, experience, determination, imagination and the guts to stay the course. Getting the customer on your side means knowing your customer better than anybody else. Do you understand and have you mapped out the life cycle of your customer? Do you know the cost of guest acquisition? Do you know the cost of losing a guest? Do you know the costs of winning them back? Hard questions to answer but information you need to know. Or just lower your rates and throw them out there to the OTA’s. They will be very happy…and sometimes that may be the right thing to do….sometimes.

Final thought…..Over the years I have learnt that it’s better to avoid getting in to a hole than having to claw your way out of it.