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Media and PR

Travelocity ad campaign is ready for prime time, but hotel product isn't

Dennis Schaal

Photo Credit: If you live in the U.S., you should be seeing a lot of the Roaming Gnome on TV in prime time over the next six weeks. The Gnome isn't used to so much attention.  Travelocity

Skift Take

It sounds as though Travelocity is betting that a new hotel offering, coming in a few months, will be somewhat of a game-changer. The Roaming Gnome's continued antics may depend on it.

Travelocity is part of a private company, Sabre, so the online travel agency's new "Go & Smell the Roses" prime time advertising campaign, launched yesterday on The Amazing Race TV show, amounts to a sort of public gut check on where Travelocity thinks it's at. Travelocity more than a decade ago was the leading OTA in the U.S., but it fell behind its peers in back-end tech and hotel offerings, and recorded operating losses in 2009, 2010 and 2011. Two years ago, Sabre brought in Carl Sparks, who had been the president of Gilt Groupe, to turn things around. How Travelocity performed in 2012 is anyone's guess, although there are no indications that the company is setting the world on fire.

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