Webjet to relaunch hotels with a GDS backed retail model. Three reasons why I don' think this is the best plan available

Webjet are having a great time selling domestic air in Australia. As we have discussed before their tech leadership in developing the Travel Services Aggregator back in 2004 enabled them to sell multi-carrier domestic air including low cost carriers before anyone else. Even though other sites now have similar functionality, Webjet continues to enjoy customer loyalty and growth (despite charging dramatically higher fees per booking).

The company has made a number of attempts at diversifying their
revenue with land product. In mid 2003 they launched Bookabed as a standalone hotel brand. In 2006 they revamped the product under the new name Lotsofhotels. Then in June 2008 they announced plans to take Lotsofhotels onto the eBay platform. Unfortunately none of these efforts have developed traction in a very competitive market.

In their recent results they announced the launch of new hotel product called "Stay and Pay" (Travel Weekly story here). This new product moves them away from merchant sales to the retail model (consumer pay at the hotel, Webjet collects commission from hotel). They are launching two twists on the retail models you see from big players like Booking.com and Venere. Firstly there is no negotiated inventory. The inventory is drawn from the publicly available rates distributed through a GDS feed from Travelport. Secondly there is a service fee of $10 per booking charged up front by Webjet.

I like the fact that Webjet are trying hotels again. Fees on air make up 97% of their operating revenue (just down from 98% last year). They need to have other revenue streams to compete with packaging experts Expedia and Zuji (Travelocity) and the Wotif group owned air intermediaries Travel.com.au and Lastminute.com.au (not to forget the Orbitz owned hotel only players HotelClub and RatesToGo) [disclosure]. That said there are three reasons why I don' think this is the best way to go about hotels for Webjet:

1. Webjet will struggle for Rate Parity: The GDS companies (Travelport included) have done an admirable job working with the Chains and some independent properties to secure rate parity through GDS distribution. By that I mean working with hotels to have the rates that are loaded in the GDS be on par with the negotiated rates provided to the OTAs. However the rates in the GDS are never cheaper and by charging a $10 booking fee, Webjet will end up with pricing that is almost always more expensive than any other channel. There will be a convenience factor for consumers but this will be at the margins compared to the consumers who will be turned away by the higher price on Webjet;
   
2. Webjet will not have access to important Inventory Types: Again the GDS companies have worked hard to expand the range of hotels and properties available. However there is still a bias towards chains and a bias towards geographies with a history of GDS distribution. This means Webjet will be missing important independent properties and have less coverage in the Asia Pacific, Latin American and Middle East regions than the negotiated hotel agencies and OTA competitors; and
   
3. Webjet will miss out of the the best Specials and Promos: In this "year of the deal", hoteliers are providing deals and promos the likes of which have not been seen since 9/11. Most of these come with conditions, specifically a range of cancellation options ranging up to non-refundable. The GDS is not able to support this functionality as well as the negotiated inventory providers. Means that many of the great deals (especially last minute ones) will not be in the feed accessed by Webjet.

I can understand why Webjet went down this route. It would be very expensive for them to build a hotel contracting team from scratch. Impossible in fact if they wanted to gain coverage outside of Australia. Therefore they need to work with partners to access inventory. However my recommendation would be to work with an inventory provider with negotiated rates rather than the GDS. [disclosure - I work for a company that provides negotiated hotel rates]. It will provide them with a fix to each of the issues above.

The new Stay and Pay product is due for beta-launch today (18 Aug 2009). Will put in a functionality review post later.

Update - make sure you check out the comments where Richard Noon (Webjet CEO) puts his side of the story

Update 2 - I thought of one more reason why this product won't give consumers as good an experience as a negotiated provider will. The room type description and hotel content on the GDS is not as clear or attractive as those from a negotiated provider. Here is an example of a room type for a Sydney hotel in a GDS " PREMIER ROOM CITY VIEW 1 QUEEN OR 2 SGLSNON SMOKING LCD TV HI SPEED INTERNET FOR A FEE".

PS - last year at TRAVELtech Webjet CEO Richard Noon gave his estimates of the turnover of the various Austrlaia online air intemediaries.

No Vacancy Conference Sydney March 19

MartinKelly of TravelTrends has been kind enough to offer me a media pass to attend the No Vacancy accommodation industry conference in Sydney on March 19. If you are going, look out for me in the back blogging away.

Speakers include Wotif CEO Robbie Cooke, HotelClub's head of central marketing Jon Wild, Adrian Currie of Booking.com and Agoda, Cyril Ranque of Expedia and Grant Colquhoun of Travelocity/Zuji (full list here).

HotelClub.com in-flight TV commercial

Last week I put up the Wotif.com Australian Television commercial appearing on local free to air TV. Here is the HotelClub.com ad that has just started to air on in flight TV for a number of Asian Pacific carriers.



In the comments let us know which you think is better...

Disclosure - my linkedin profile is available for all to see - including role at HotelClub

If you love a list of hotel sites, you'll like (and hate) TOP 100 HOTEL SITES

Found this site while surfing around. Claims to be a list of the "Top 100 Hotel Sites". List is generated using

The URL of every Hotel site was found in multiple internet searches and the amount of mentions of site's addresses is used to generate the rating. Hotel directory and travel guide. Includes information on tours attractions, restaurants, hotels reservations, travel jobs and more.

Whatever. There are some really bizarre rankings here. TripAdvisor is number one, Orbitz three, Booking.com four, Hotels.com five and Expedia six - all of which sounds find. However stuck at number two is myswitzerland.com, which undermines the whole list. Missing from the list are Wotif, HotelClub, RatesToGo, Rakuten and probably many more. Can't say either way if this is run by legitimate enthusiasts or just a link farm...and don't care. If you ignore the rankings and order, it provides a decent list a lot of the main (but also the minor) online hotel players.

Hotelscombined joins the meta-search wars with a difference

Caught up for coffee today with Yury Shar of Hotelscombined.com. Yury is a fellow ex-Cendantite and former super-star from Travelport owned FlairviewTravel. He and his fellow Hotelscombined founders were the creators/builders of some of the best pay-per-click bid management systems I have ever seen. They are now back in the online game with two meta-search products - Productreview.com.au and Hotelscombined.

As the names indicate ProductReview is a broad product site (much like PriceGrabber that I commented on earlier) and Hotelscombined is hotel meta-search.

The Hotelscombined product is fighting in the same space in Asia as other meta-search players Bezurk and Sprice.com. They are also happy to take on the big guys - Sidestep & Kayak. They are trying to build a global business from Sydney. Yury tells me that currently 60% of traffic is coming from customers outside of Australia and they hope to raise that to 70% by the end of the year.

But Hotelscombined are more than a me too play. They have taken a different functionality/UI approach than the other players. They are keeping the traffic on their site for longer than the others. The typical meta-search player (if there is such a thing) sends the traffic over to the partner site relatively early in the search - just after the sort order results are displayer. Hotelscombined keeps the traffic for a click or two more. It sends the traffic over after the room type selection has been made.

The result is that they should:

1. have a larger number of page views per visitor producing interesting monetisation options; and
2. be sending traffic that is more qualified than the typical player and therefore producing higher conversions for partner site.

The major downside is that the searches take a little bit longer to complete. It also means that their layout looks different to the others. Sometimes difference can be good, but it can often confuse consumers getting used to a new model.

With their history and expertise expect Hotelscombined to be very aggressive and targeted in paid search. Well done Yury on a great product.

Helping airlines stay on top

Airlines dominate online travel in many markets. In fact in Australia, Japan, Ireland, Spain and many others the number one airline carrier(s) are also the number one online travel player(s) regardless of what measure you use (traffic, sales, brand recognition). My story earlier this week of Qantas' efforts in online hotels (ReadyRooms) turned me to thinking about what is it that airlines in this position of online market lead need to (and should) do to fight off the cashed up and hungry for expansion online agencies (Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz) and the scrappy, lean and very good at what they do "little guys" (Wotif, Venere, HRS, Flairview).

The simple answer and the one that most of the airlines seem to be following is simple do more of the same. First, provide dirt cheap fares that are online available online and market the hell out of it. Second, partner with someone (either external or if you have a "holiday" division, internal) for complementary products (hotel, car) and point some traffic at those areas for some extra revenue. This is a good strategy but pursuing it unmodified will not guarantee success.

Here are three things that I recommend strong online distribution airline players do to sure up their position. The first for revenue, the second for loyalty and the third for focus:

1. Cross Sell of Complementary Product: But not through a third party (Ryanair and Expedia style) and not through the holiday or vacation division of the airline (Qantas and ReadyRooms style). Instead they need to invest in a true independent but in-house hotel business one that lives by the principles and processes that have made the "little guys" (see above) so successful - hotel flexibility in rates and availability, product focus and online product managers living and breathing their channel. Leaving it to someone else leaves you open to the expansion plans of someone else. Leaving it to you holiday division means that the hotel contracting style and results mirrors the less flexible world of wholesale. Either way you do not end up with the inventory and pricing you need to beat the little guys. Just as important you need to match the big guys in putting cross sell in the purchase path through both dynamic packaging and shopping basket style. Both of these things mean investing seriously in the complementary product;
   
2. Customer rewards beyond price: Web only deals and lots of them drove customers to Airline websites but with the OTAs now using API connections and screen-scraping to provide customers with the same inventory, the airlines need to expand their offering to customers. Use content, loyalty concepts/miles, customer service and bonuses (all the stuff that OTAs do) to open up another front in retaining customers; and
3. Channel management and structure: Stop treating the online channel as...well...just another channel. Make it a separate business in itself. Put the person in charge, truly in charge such that they never have to enter into a debate over cannibalisation of other channels. Turn the site into a business that is independent of the airline's other sales activities.

Do none of these and these airlines might stay on top but do all of these and they definitely will. Would be interested in your thoughts for other things successful online airlines can do to protect their gains.

Expedia Spain, too little too late or better late than never?

Expedia has announced its Spanish launch. Expedia went first to the UK and Germany but then slowed, entering France after its competitors form the early days (Lastminute and eBookers), taking a softly softly approaches to the rest of Europe. The strategy was successesful as a lot of money was thrown by the competition in smaller markets while Expedia proved itself a winner in the UK through focus. However the question remains whether they have been too cautious and waited too long for Spain. I asked Euro online travel expert, BOOT guest editor and honorary Spaniard Michael Potts of e-interactive to give us his thoughts. Here is what he had to say...

I'm a bit confused about this post, because I don't know whether to write either:

• The online travel market in Spain is buzzing, and at last the great bastion of online travel has come to this great country.or
• Nothing has really happened, except that Expedia has started pushing the PPC bid levels on Google and Yahoo up as they try desperately to deliver the volume and market share that their US bosses want to see.

So, why my confusion? Well:

I have been waiting for Expedia to launch here for 2 years - it means that the market is mature enough to support their demanding targets for success, and in other developing markets Expedia has been the explosive catalyst that made the entire online travel market go crazy.

BUT there are three reasons why Expedia will have to work harder in this market than they may think

1. Spain is different - the Spanish are more price sensitive than most Europeans and although they use the internet (a lot) to research travel, buying it online is a different thing entirely. Expedia is a lot of things but it is not cheap;
   
2. The "marketing" market is relatively mature in Spain - there doesn't appear to be a lot of partnership agreements, PPC undervalue, affiliates or cheap bus ads freely and easily available. These have traditionally been ways that Expedia has quickly gained traction in other new markets; and
   
3. Iberia.com, and some very mature OTA's already exist in this market - Iberia.com accounted for 70% of all online travel transactions in 2001 and is still a massive player in Spain. eDreams.es, Rumbo.es and Viajar.com all seem to have steady growth and market experience and hotel-only players Booking.com, HotelClub.com and RatesToGo.com are also strong here.

Clearly its not going to be plain sailing for Expedia. Whereas in Italy, for instance, they moved early, captured some great marketing agreements and set the bar for competitors to follow, they are too late to the party in Spain.

Good luck Expedia, Spain needs you, I'm just sorry it took so long.

Taxes, we dont see no stinkin' taxes 2

Enjoyed this week's guest post from Mike Potts and wanted to add my two cents to the taxes debate. Read that post first before reading this.

Mike mentioned that there are two forces a work - Legality and Profit. I also think there is a third force - Complexity.

In some cases it is genuinely very hard to keep track of variable tax regimes all around Europe especially when they vary within a country. I do not excuse those sites that use this complexity to and deliberately hide the taxes to under-quote fares but at the same time I think the authorities should take some of the blame for the scale of the problem. For example there are a number of towns across France charging city taxes of around a Euro or so a night. Taxes that go up and down without warning. This complexity particularly hits those sites that have developed simple one size fits all extranet approaches (ie Booking.com, RatesToGo, Wotif) because the algorithms needed to cover every city and every country would require a team for 5 to update and manage. It especially hits those companies that have a full or part pay on check out model (ie Booking.com and RatesToGo) as it is on the hotel to make the final determination and enforcement - the customer service impacts of making a mistake are enormous.

That all said - I agree with Mike that it a consumer protection dark zone where most countries force airlines to put all the taxes and charges into advertisements for fares but hotels and hotel intermediaries are free to hide the final price. The intermediaries need to be as up front as they possibly can about taxes as soon as they can and not use any problems associated with complexity as a false price competitive advantage and the EU needs to do something useful and (best case) standardise some of this across Europe or (achievable case) put out a definitive guide for intermediaries to hotel taxes.

Taxes, we dont see no stinkin' taxes

Guest Editor Post from Michael Potts of e-interactive

A critical question is arising around the inclusion of taxes and services charges in online hotel commerce sites. The question is…should independent hotel websites hide taxes in favour of displaying a cheaper rate, or will this just make for annoyed customers?

Picture the scene: you walk into a clothes store, and quickly spot the perfect Friday night shirt. You look at the price – 19€ - perfect. You take it to the counter, the check-out guy/girl scans it, then says, “that’ll be 25€ please.” You look at the check-out guy/girl quizzically, smile and point at the price on the ticket, to which they answer, “oh, that is the tax-excluded price.” Personally I would either ask for the manager, or more likely walk out of the store in disgust.

I am used to a tax-included price in the store. I am not used to waiting until the last minute until the final price is presented to me. I am not, ever, going to buy a hotel stay at Booking.com for exactly this reason.

Booking.com doesn’t include a tax-included price in its website, even at the point where the customer is adding their credit card details to the page. In fact, Booking.com is not alone in this practice. Many hotel aggregators quote tax-exclusive prices, at least in the first step of the purchase process.

So then, back to the original question. How does the humble hotelier, hoping to get some 0% commission sales through their own website, price the stay, especially knowing that the same room is appearing on their distributors sites without tax included? Do they make me happy and provide a fully inclusive price, or accept that their wannabe customers are actually shopping around and finding (very unclear) tax-exclusive prices on their resellers websites?

Their appears to be two forces at work here. Legality and profit.

Dealing with profit first, the decision appears to be a difficult one. Does our hotelier risk customer dissatisfaction after the purchase when they realize that the price has changed for the worse (and risk a cancellation perhaps), or risk not having that customer at all?

It might be that this issue is best answered by looking at how the hotel resellers are displaying prices and thus understanding better what the customer sees when they are shopping around. I did a little research and there appears to be three main ways of displaying prices:

• Taxes included every step of the way
• Taxes displayed in the total price during or after the first step, but not in the “per day” rates
• Taxes not even displayed at the point where the credit card is asked for.

The following is a list of the way that some of the popular travel sites display hotel prices

Site	Display on 1st results page	Full price quoted at point of credit card
Expedia.co.uk	Per day prices without taxes, total on results page taxes and charges included	Yes
Travelocity.co.uk	Tax included	Yes
Lastminute.com	Tax included	Yes
Booking.com	Prices without taxes	No
HRS	Prices without taxes	No prices on this page
Active Hotels	Tax included	Yes
Rates to Go	Prices without taxes	No

Three of the seven sites I looked at don’t even quote the final price payable on the page where the customer adds their credit card details. It looks like Booking.com, HRS and Ratestogo don’t really mind the negative feelings that could occur here. Perhaps then customers don’t have a negative feeling in this case.

For most hotel websites the fact is that if their rooms are displayed on any of the tax-exclusive sites then they might be better quoting tax-exclusive rates, at least initially. This would at least lead to a level playing field where comparison shoppers are concerned. It might increase conversion rates, and reduce distribution payments also. What is also clear is that pricing, regardless of the tax issue should be clear about what is included and what is not.

So what about legality? Legal or not, it appears that some large organizations with deep pockets are operating a tax-exclusive pricing policy. Perhaps then hotels shouldn’t be worried about the legality as long as far more visible websites are practising this.

UPDATE - Some nice friends and others have rightly pointed out that often the tax pricing situations I have described occur in countries where taxation is more difficult to deal with. My market of interest is Spain, and for Spain all the information written above is true. For other destinations it may not be. However, having worked for many years with the development side of online travel I have to mention that not correcting this problem is less because it is impossible to solve, but because a high enough priority has not been assigned to solve it. Let’s hope in time that common sense prevails and clear pricing practices are forced on all travel vendors.

Downside of independent property listings

Nice little legal battle is engulfing some of Sydney's "elite" over desires to list apartments for short term leases (ie a week or so) on online hotel sites. The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting on an imminent court battle between a number of owners of apartments at the AEA Grand building in Sydney's Darling Harbour and the City of Sydney Council over zoning. The owners want to rent out their apartments by the week, the Council wants to stop them and Wotif.com is caught in the middle (according to the SMH article but I could not find a listing on Wotif of the AEA Grand).

Is an example of the regulatory and operational problems that have been hitting a number of the extranet only, flexible data structure online hotel players like Wotif.com, RatesToGo.com and Priceline's Activehotels in accessing and supporting rentals of independent property inventory. It does not take much for a property owner to put up a property for rent of sites like these - a couple of photographs, text, rates and a process for picking up a key. It is hard and expensive for the product/inventory managers at the sites to verify the legality of using the premises for short stay. If lawyer had to be involved in every approach from an independent property then hotel acquisition would grind to a halt. But you cannot ignore this inventory - independent properties are the last frontier of sale online.

The answer is:

• for product/inventory managers to be trained on how to minimise the risks (ie reject private homes, search the web for other listings and yank the property as soon as there is a hint of problems);
  
• to prepare the customer care team with an action plan for dealing with customers that are stung by a lock-out; and
• develop new products for supplier access. The "old fashioned" extranet approach needs to be reworked to support a property that has only one room.
  

HRS enters the UK

Will avoid any war like analogies in commenting on HRS's announcement that they are entering the UK market. HRS are the dominant player in the German (and I think also Austrian) markets. In the Travelmole article they claim 54% of the online German market.

This is a smart strategy for them - maybe a year or two earlier than would have been perfect but a good move. The market is crowded and they will have to work hard take on the cocky and growing Pricleine (through Activehotels and Bookings.org - hey speaking of which I have not yet seen the implementation of the proposed name change) the entrenched and all powerful Expedia and Lastminute.com and the perpetual successful sleeper site combo of HotelClub and RatesToGo. They have the right content mix to fight with these player but will need to work on traffic and marketing from the UK (obviously) but may also have to abandon their long held belief in keeping the display unbiased. In a cut throat market like the UK you need to use revenue management tools to make the most of out each piece of traffic you get your hands on including sort order biasing and display management.

Travelport still trying to shake a (now 2) billion dollar hang-over

Travelport's Q3 06 results are out. Net revenue is at $631mm - down from last quarter's $693mm. B2C net revenue was $193, well down on Q2 of $221mm - in fact on par with Q2 2005 results of $195. But that is not the story. The story is that there was a "Net loss of $1.2 billion which included a pretax non-cash impairment charge of approximately $1.2 billion".

Two big questions from this line.

Firstly - how are they still being laboured with the hang over of turning $7b into $4.3b? I thought it clear that his monkey was off the back last quarter?

Secondly - a non-cash impairment of $1.2 bil means that there is a net loss of $1.2bil means a zero EBITDA (actually -$1.3mm).

The answer in the first one is buried deep in the Q3 press release where they say

"the Company recorded a total impairment charge of $2.4 billion (which includes the estimate of $1.2 billion taken in the June quarter), representing the difference in the carrying value of goodwill of the Company’s B2C and B2B reporting units and the implied fair value of goodwill of those reporting units"

In other words - I called the "monkey off the back" too early. I went back to the Q2 results and listened to Q3 call to see if I missed it. I did not. In the Q2 results they estimated the impairment of $1bil but through the period of Q2 realised that it was double that. Ouch!

The second - appears to be legitimately put down to continued restructuring and business challenges. They say on the conference call that B2C (Oribit, HotelClub/RatesToGo, Cheaptickets and eBookers) are at break even. Presumably held back mainly by eBookers (see also the delay in role out of their new Orbitz backed platform).

Hopefully finally we can call Travelport free.

Fairfax announces big play with few details

Travel weekly are running a story with big talk from Fairfax (huge Australian media company) on their plans for online travel. Fairfax made a very tentative step into travel when they acquired independent accom provider Stayz in December last year for AU$12mm. I always thought this a strange first move into travel. While I think the potential for the independent accom sector is great, Stayz did not have a particularly strong brand at the time and its technology is nothing special. There has been great interest in what Fairfax would do next. Now we know - well we have a bit more of an idea - well we have a little bit of a hint of a possibility.

According to Travelweekly, Fairfax will launch four sites in the next six months. The first is Hotelz. The quote from the article is that Fairfax and Zuji have entered into a "content deal". Unclear what that means but from the look of the hotelz beta site it involves a white-label booking engine. The site is in beta so can't be too critical yet but if they want to challenge Wotif, Lastminute, RatesToGo etc then it is going to need a better search functionality. Typing Sydney into the Hotelz search box and choosing Australia it still asks me for clarification - if I have chosen Sydney Australia, how could I possibly be thinking about Nova Scotia?

The engine url has regular references to travelpn.com - not heard of them before though judging by Alexa they provide white-label solutions for a number of airlines and Zuji. Could be an offshoot of Travelocity.

I like the Chutzpah and drive of Fairfax Digital travel boss James Cassidy claiming that "within 18 months it [Fairfax] will become a major force in online travel, even rivalling Wotif". However the basis for his claim does not stand up to scrutiny. He says “Wotif offers bookings within one month and only 30 per cent of the market book in that window,”. It will be a fatal error for Fairfax to chase the other 70% (assuming this number is true) as all of the money to date in online travel is in a booking window within one month. The sectors that are booking beyond that date are the least likely to book online.

I also caution them on relying too much on white-labels. Controlling product and inventory is critical to success in online travel. Telstra' s Sensis jumped into online travel through GoStay - a white-label of AOT's needitnow - and it has gone nowhere. My earlier comments on that are here. Rumours are Travelport is also remembering that lesson and unwinding its efforts to combine offline and online hotel contracting.

Webjet want in

Well known that Webjet have a lot of money in the bank from their cash flow positive activities but especially the option buy by s8. Now they tell us they want to spend it on buying somebody. They want in on more that just the organic growth market. Best idea for them - buy a hotel player. Webjet need to have in-house inventory and functionality for cross selling their flights volume. White-label deals with HotelClub will not be enough. Spending some of their cash on a good acquisition would also help sure up the balance sheet to fight off a raider.

Changing faces good, changing prices bad...

Online retail - particularly in a market like travel - is a tough balance between finding a global marketing and product approach to ensure consistency in experience and local targeting to ensure you do the best for (and make the most out of) customers in each local market. In the hotel world I have often ranted against different prices for different markets as customers find out too easily and turn against you. However there is a layout and promotions role that has to be different for each market. Expedia/Hotels.com has often taken the lead in this. Was looking today at the differences in the Hotels.com AU site, UK site and US site. Very different layouts, promotions, sort order and targeting but (I think) the same pricing and inventory.

I also like the HotelClub and RatesToGo approach of global layout with specials, language and currency options providing the targeting but (mainly) with single market pricing. I do not think their sister site Octopustravel.com's approach of asking you at the beginning where you are from and change their pricing accordingly works. The analogy I have heard defending different pricing for different markets it is like McDonalds or 7-11 where you have the same general theme but different products and pricing to reflect that different lunch time tastes and economic conditions in each market. However while I cannot go to a McDonalds in Tokyo or San Fran for lunch I can go to a Japanese based or US based online hotel property or intermediary and obtain a room.

Lotsofhotels joins the hotel club

Webjet have announced the anticipated launch of lotsofhotels. I have already commented on the "new" nature of the site and the false starts with URLs but I think a separate brand name is a good move for them so long as it does not distract from improving cross sales and package sales on the webjet site. The main aim of a seller of domestic flights online should be to cross sell as much hotel inventory as possible. A hotel only site can be complementary to this strategy as you can try and pick up those customers that you lost on the flight sale or travel by car etc but it cannot replace this strategy. The big challenge in having a two brand strategy with both selling hotels is to make sure that there is something different in the product strategy. Customers will pick up very quickly - as they did with Expedia and Hotels.com - when it is simply the same inventory and pricing but in two different colours.

David says the site will "initially feature around 22,000 properties before expanding to approximately 60,000". 22,000 is a familiar number - sounds a lot like the HotelClub numbers. That's because it is - the launch version of lotsofhotels.com appears to be a white-label affiliate deal with HotelClub. So while I applaud David on the launch, much like GoStay using needitnow/AOT inventory, he will need to develop his own inventory and ensure a differentiation with Webjet - then the hard job of taking on the big guys (Wotif, Lastminute.com and RatesToGo/HotelClub) in marketing. He has the money for it so we have to give them a chance.

UPDATE - confirmation here of the Travelport/HotelClub connection in this deal

UPDATE 2 - thanks to Ciprian who points out that there is also inventory from HotelClub's FlairviewTravel stable-mate RatesToGo

Webjet and hotels online - Now I agree that it is a new site as they forgot to get the dotcom address

Brilliant. I have criticised Webjet for claiming that they were going to launch a new hotel only product - bookabed - as this product was more than three years old and failed at the first attempt. Now Travelweekly are reporting that it truly will be a new site as someone at Webjet failed to secure the rights to the bookabed.com leaving Webjet with just bookabed.com.au. We can now look forward to a truly "new" product at lotsofbeds.com. Big challenges ahead for lotsofbeds to join the strong players challenging Wotif - lastminute.com.au, RatesToGo.com, needahotel, readyrooms (assuming their URL works) etc. To have a chance, Webjet will have to execute flawlessly including getting URL registrations right.

RIP Lodging.com

It seems Cendant/Travelport have finally pulled the plug on the terminal Lodging.com. Lodging has always struggled to compete with category king Hotels.com and even it's Cendant/Travelport brothers and sisters such as HotelClub. It is strange that the URL does not automatically redirect to sister site Orbitz . Makes not sense to give users an option. Lodging.com was always a two-bit player with poor tech, zero brand recognition and good but not-good-enough inventory. It's always sad to see a site go time was up a long time ago. RIP but unlikely to be missed.

Depends what you mean by new

Webjet's announcement of a "new" online hotel booking engine received a lot a press in Australia. Webjet first launch Bookabed in mid 2003 so no idea how they can call this either a launch or a new site. The huge valuation of Wotif post float has clearly re-excited David and team at Webjet on the potential for hotel focused businesses. Bookabed's failure first time round was due to poor inventory and insufficient marketing to take on Wotif and the other Australian market leaders Lastminute.com.au and RatesToGo. The only difference we can see so far from the announcement is the addition of S8 inventory. That is not going to be enough to change the fortunes of this not-so-new player. It will get lost in the noise of Lastminute's continued fightback and RatesToGo's continued decline.