When Sabre Interactive/ Worldview System's Travelocity hit the World Wide Web, the concept of booking travel/vacation arrangements online was as foreign to many travel editors and consumers as booking a vacation to the moon. Houston's Vollmer Public Relations' branding expertise would be put to the test when it was retained in late 1995 to support Travelocity's 1996 launch by trumpeting it to traditional and online media as one of the world's largest and most comprehensive travel planning sites on the Web.
Successfully penetrating a widely divergent media environment with varying levels of Net-savviness would be the campaign's greatest challenge, according to Carolyn Levy, Vollmer's vice president/manager/supervisor, who guesstimates that the media's awareness level of Internet commerce sites like Travelocity was about 25 percent at pre-launch. "Most of the media's reaction was 'Web what?' when we first introduced the Travelocity campaign. The learning process for them was incredible and continues to this day."
The four-member Vollmer team ushered in this learning process with a three-phase campaign that relied on creative educational site tours, deskside media visits, a trendy restaurant launch event and highly accessible executives as spokespeople.
Lessons LearnedThough Travelocity enjoys an enviable premier name as a market innovator and leader, George Lynch pointed out a few areas where communications about its position of authority fell short and will be pumped up.
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A particular PR challenge in briefing the business, trade and consumer media targets was not only making them understand its powerful scope - millions of pages of electronic information powered by Fort Worth, Tex-based Sabre Interactive's (SI) computer reservation and World View's (WV) impressive destination information - but also keeping them abreast of continuous feature expansions in non-technospeak.
From the outset, the Vollmer team touted Travelocity as the most innovative, cost-effective, simple point-and-click travel planning site on the Web by establishing a familiar media relationship with the parent companies early on. "We explained [to the media] Sabre's everyday role in their lives by pointing out that they probably use its vast computer reservations system when booking their own travel on the phone," said Levy. Vollmer's user-friendly claims would be heavily scrutinized, tested and reviewed by the campaign's diverse targets, from USA Today and Newsweek, to PC World and Travel Weekly.
Booking Online Media Tours
The pre-launch media relations effort backgrounded reporters on the online travel industry with key messages and talking points, the benefits of the SI/WV alliance and comprehensive media packets announcing the pending site launch and its capabilities.
Deskside media visits that walked reporters through how to book flights and plan vacation destinations were conducted in San Francisco, Dallas and New York.
Throughout pre-launch and launch, the main promotional glitches were teaching the media how to navigate the site and making them aware of some of the systemic problems of Internet commerce, according to Levy.
But from a marketing standpoint, Sabre was very concerned about how serious congestion problems would impact Travelocity's image, according to George Lynch, Sabre's director of marketing, who says for that reason the company spends millions of dollars on software to provide speedier access.
The launch's centerpiece event took place at New York's trendy Cyber Cafe in the Soho district.
Since the primary consumer target was do-it-yourself travelers and net-savvy surfers, the cafe provided an ideal promotional opportunity for hands-on, show-and-tell computer presentations. The event attracted about 200 media guests as well as key suppliers, advertisers and analysts. CEOs from SI/WV were on hand to "flip the switch" for the online launch.
A satellite media tour using a special B-roll and footage from the Cyber Cafe event immediately followed the promotional event and was rounded out by a wire release, an on-line media chat room with CEOs and targeted e-mail communication with key editors.
The preliminary PR push paid off; USA Today favorably reviewed Travelocity on launch day. Soon after, the site generated high profile ink in PC World, Net Guide, The Net, Yahoo Internet Life and Interactive Week.
To date, the Travelocity's award winning campaign (PRSA's Grand Excalibur Award, Texas Public Relations Association's (TPRA) Silver Spur and the Texas chapter IABC's Bronze Quill) has generated more than 260 broadcast segments.
The site's usage has soared to more than 1million members.
(Vollmer Public Relations, 713/546-2230; Sabre Interactive, 817/963-3372)