BookIt.com, an online travel agency based in Panama City Beach, Fla., is engaged in its first national TV advertising campaign.
The TV spots, appearing on CNN and the Weather Channel, are tied to a "Count Down to Spring" sale, and are integrated with satellite radio and online campaigns, as well.
Here's a video of the currently running ad:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyoBJfWiAWI
Jesse Henson, the company's vice president of marketing, says BookIt.com didn't have the resources to spend on a pure branding campaign, but mixes in branding with its Spring sale so the company can key in on its return on investment.
"Being an online company, we're used being able to track things very easily," Henson says, adding that with an offline campaign, "you have to look at the big picture."
BookIt.com, which launched in 2004 when it acquired the BookIt.com URL, is not your run-of-the mill online travel agency.
Like getaroom does with hotels, BookIt.com focuses on a limited number of destinations. For BookIt.com, these include Mexico, the Caribbean, Florida, New York, Las Vegas, Hawaii and California.
Another differentiator is that BookIt.com operates its own call center at its new headquarters' facility in Panama City Beach.
"We don't tout ourselves as the any-destination travel site," Henson says.
Another difference-maker, according to Henson, is what he describes as BookIt.com's patent-pending FROM (Fast Relevant Origin Method) technology.
FROM identifies the consumer's closest airport, analyzes what other site visitors are buying and then recommends the best destinations and deals from that airport, Henson says.
So, BookIt.com automatically -- and somewhat erroneously -- identified my closest airport as New York's LaGuardia. I changed it to Newark Airport and BookIt.com provided the following Top 20 Vacation Deals FROM Newark (EWR). It looks like this:
Henson argues that plenty of applications, including mobile ones, already are location-based, but the complexity of the FROM algorithm makes it stand out.
He says the algorithm processes "tons of data" and "we had to shore up our servers to handle the amount."
"We're serving up great deals customized for you, based in part on customer behavior and people in your area," Henson says.
BookIt.com, privately held by several individuals with no outside funding, has more than 300 employees, including call center agents in Panama City Beach, and marketing managers at its key destinations.