Travelzoo’s Hotel Transformation Is Slow and Painful
Photo Credit: Travelzoo is transitioning from a reliance on vouchers and "deals" to being a more traditional hotel-booking platform. Travelzoo
Skift Take
The advantage that Travelzoo has that other new entrants in hotel booking don't is those 24.5 million registered members/newsletter subscribers. If Travelzoo can tweak its hotel booking engine and get it going, then at least it already has an audience.
So you want to launch a hotel booking site? It isn't easy -- just ask the people who work at Travelzoo.
The New York-based deal publisher, which now has 24.5 million members, has been laboring away over the last year, adding hotel-booking capabilities so it can supplement its "push" capabilities of inspiring people to take an unplanned vacation with the "pull" acumen of enabling customers to search for hotels when they need them.
"We have been very successful in the past 15 years to inspire our users by telling them about great deals at quality places," said Holger Bartel, Travelzoo's executive chairman, during the company's first quarter earnings call April 16. "We will tell them, for example, to take a five-day trip to Iceland at an amazing price, but when they are simply looking to find a deal for an upcoming weekend getaway in New York, we offer little help. We believe there is a great growth opportunity to serve our members better by helping them find deals when and where th
