A first for Australian TV – Online travel company set to advertise on TV

Sydney 22 May 2003 – At a time when the online and tourism industries are perceived to be slumping, an Australian online travel company is bucking the trend and going where no pure play has gone before.

Australia’s largest online accommodation provider, Flairview Travel, is set to be the first Internet pure play and indeed online accommodation company to embark on a TVC campaign, which has just kicked off on the Nine Network.

The national campaign for the company’s hotel booking website, www.HotelClub.com.au, created by ad agency Sponge, features animation of the site’s logo designed to create a distinct look and feel for the brand along with a different hot accommodation deal offered to viewers each week – with the aim to entice viewers with a direct call to action too good to refuse.

The TVC campaign follows a boom period for the company which has continued to grow as much as 500 per cent yearly since 1999, despite major world events like 11 September, Ansett collapse, Iraq War and SARS outbreak leading to the collapse of many in the tourism space.

To date Flairview Travel has enjoyed significant success growing the business through completely “online” marketing initiatives around the globe. The decision to develop an “offline” strategy came after a televised editorial piece delivered an immediate and dramatic spike in bookings.

“We’ve had amazing results with our online strategies where we’ve succeeded in reaching considerable numbers in the global online travelling community,” said Ms Chloe Lim, Flairview Travel’s marketing director.

“However, we just couldn’t ignore that first “toe in the water” experience we saw in the offline world, so we’re starting to take a more holistic approach with both online and offline activities – helping us to reach new markets.

“With no other Internet pure plays and certainly not in the online accommodation space advertising on TV before, we are hoping to gain a top of mind position with a much broader share of travellers in Australia,” Ms Lim said.

HotelClub.com.au’s TVC campaign accounts for about 80 per cent of the company’s offline marketing spend for the year and will run throughout the year. Public Relations makes up the other key offline investment.

Animation was selected for its ability to cut-through and convey HotelClub’s key strengths – savings of up to 60 per cent on hotel rooms and a wide choice of over 6,000 hotels in 750 cities globally – simply and effectively in a limited timeframe.

The HotelClub site currently attracts over 1.5 million unique visitors a month from all parts of the world and Flairview Travel hopes the TVC campaign will help to substantially grow this number and increase bookings within the Australian market.

Sponge’s creative team were art directors, Mark Sykes and David Gibson and copywriter Cec Parnell while Shirley Brown developed the advertising strategy. The media buy was undertaken by Pearman Media, headed up by Dominic Pearman.

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For further information please contact:
Lisa Pickard / Nicole Reading
Icon Communications
Tel: 02 9231 1103
Email: [email protected] , [email protected]

Chloe Lim
Director of Sales and Marketing
Flairview Travel
Tel: +61 2 8263 5106
Fax: +61 2 9264 0255
Email: [email protected]