Ever since it launched in the UK in 2005 online deals publisher Travelzoo has claimed its deals undergo the most rigorous independent testing to make sure they are what they seem.
So this week a select trio of trade journos, Travolution included, was invited down to the firm's Covent Garden offices to see for themselves the process.
We sat through the weekly Monday Top 20 meeting, the first of the week when potential deals and leads are discussed and scrutinised for inclusion in Wednesday's deals alert.
It's easy to be cynical and to expect that, in truth, as long as you're prepared to pay your deal gets in the list, but Monday's exercise was designed to demonstrate this is not the case.
The London team consists of 10 "producers", mainly ex-journalists we were told, with, judging by the array of accents, plenty of firsthand experience of international travel.
Also patched into a conference call, reminiscent of the judging in the Eurovision Song Contest, were producers in Manchester and Switzerland.
"Come in Switzerland, this is London calling."
A long list of deals harvested from the weekend papers were in front of them each to be discussed debated and either discarded or given the Travelzoo seal of approval.
One cruise deal hanging in the balance was put to the vote and lost out - a little too niche, particularly compared to a last minute Med cruise deal that was given the nod.
At first glance trying to verify if a particular deal is the best in the market would appear to be an almost impossible task with all the options available.
But with enough people, enough time and armed with data on previous deals featured it appears it is possible to give a weekly assessment of the merits of a particular deal.
So, on Monday we saw a Croatia holiday deal left out because, when the £3 protection fee was added it wasn't that competitive after all.
A Prague short break costing just over £100 needed more research because, with cheap Prague flights earlier considered good enough to make the list, it might be possible to package up cheaper.
A Tunisia break advertised by a well known Online Travel Agent was discovered to be not as cheap as a comparable trip offered by a well known high street travel agent.
It was decided to contact the latter directly to give them the good news about how good a deal they were offering, and to see if they wanted to get it on the Top 20 list.
Price, clearly, is a key consideration but not the be all and end all.
To make the Top 20 the deal just has to be considered to be market leading, and it also helps if it's eye-catching.
Flight deals from a new eastern Europe airline made the cut, not just because a new airline is something of a novelty these days but departure and destination airports were unusual.
Each week the Top 20 is made up of paid-for advertisements, which Travelzoo says go through the same rigorous testing as the free ads that make up the list.
Travelzoo is also able to segment its subscriber database, so certain slots in the Top 20 can have more than one deal against them.
Producers admit it can be hard to find enough fantastic deals each week and maintain Travelzoo's Top 20 reputation for only highlighting the very best offers.
But still a deal could be knocked back if records of subscriber ratings of previous deals (marked out of 6) are not good enough or even a little local knowledge casts doubt on an advertisers' claim.
We were told a UK hotel was once visited in person by a Travelzoo researcher before an offer was verified and on Monday the inside knowledge of a native New Yorker helped one deal through.
For Travelzoo producing a diverse range of offers for the Top 20 is just as important as making sure those deals exist.
On Monday everything from £1,000 long-haul holidays to domestic coach deals priced in pennies came under scrutiny.
It's travel's very own game of Deal or No Deal?
10 tips for getting your deal on Travelzoo's Top 20
1. Market test your offer - make sure your deal beats those being promoted by all your main rivals
2. There's no point lying -Travelzoo's researchers and test bookers claim they will weed out any spurious deals
3. Don't make your deal too last minute and make sure you have sufficient stock to make it a viable contender for Travelzoo's one million UK subscribers
4. Iron out any glitches in your website - Travelzoo test bookers based in Germany claim to have found 18,000 on European travel websites last year alone
5. Include something eye-catching, or "newsworthy" like a free excursion, meals or transfers
6. Be prepared to argue your case - you could be called directly by a Travelzoo researcher about concerns about your hotel
7. Keep an eye on your Tripadvisor reviews - Travelzoo does and factors these in
8. If you're an agent know your product because any concerns that can't be answered might count against you
9. If you can't be the cheapest offer something unusual like a new destination, new flight or hotel
10. Try to make sure there are plenty of departure dates - a cheap deal to the Caribbean in the middle of hurricane season isn't likely to make it
Lee Hayhurst
Alas the intrepid trio of select hacks would've had a fourth arm but time constraints wouldn't allow :)
Travelzoo is a fascinating and pretty successful model, copied by almost everyone with a decent database of subscribers.
Some questions:
* How many of the product suppliers/intermediaries who pay to be on the Travelzoo site actually make it to the weekly Top 20?
* What percentage of subscribers in the UK, for example, are from bought lists?
* Indeed, can a product like Travelzoo be created without buying lists?
Hi Kevin,
Thanks for your questions.
- We have never and will never 'buy lists'. Every Travelzoo subscriber, 18 million around the world and counting, have signed up on Travelzoo's websites directly. This is perhaps the single biggest point of difference between Travelzoo's community of travel enthusiasts and others who try to copy us. Our subscribers & website users across Europe clicked over 74 million times on travel offers in 2009, that gives you a sense of the quality and level of interest our subscriber have in travel.
- The percentage of offers that are submitted to us and make it through the Top 20 process, into the Top 20 varies. Chris Loughlin said at ABTA that about 25% of offers get pushed back. He was making a point there that even as MD of Europe and now future CEO, he would not prevent our Editors from pushing back on a deal that does not stack up. As a publisher yourself, you know news needs to be credible or else you lose your reader. Its the same for Travelzoo.
Thanks,
Joel
Hi Joel,
I have never used travelzoo because probably most of the time my holidays have been planned well in advance, but the problem with a lot of these types of deals sites is that the offers can sell out very quickly, this then leads to frustration for the consumer when they are sent to the providers website to find its sold out.
How quickly is the site updated when a deal is sold or no longer available? Do you also check that the deals are real and not just a trick to get consumers through the door?
Hi Darren,
You are absolutely right that lots of travel deals sell out quickly. This might be because there isn't enough stock, but it might also be for yield reasons - for example a hotel or airline yield system sees lots of demand very quickly and knocks the price up, even though there are still lots of capacity. This can be infuriating for consumers, and it can also lead to poor conversions for travel companies (because consumers cannot get something they think they can, so they abandon).
We handle this in two ways. When assessing an offer for publish, we check the availability. That’s really the first step, then we investigate other aspects of the offer. If we are dealing with cruises for example, we'll speak with agents about their allocations. Once we move into pre-publish our Test Booking Center in Munich starts to monitor the offer, you can see the video on our German site here: http://de.travelzoo.com/about/, we also do the same in our Chicago based Test Booking Center, a full video of that is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ikxxa6UEUIQ. If the Test Booking Center finds an error or a bug (worldwide we found over 136,713 instances of errors in the booking process in 2009), we update the deal page on our site to inform our audience. We also call the travel company and let them know.
In addition to the no availability problem you have identified, we might find that the website of the travel company is too slow. You'll see in our recent release, a quote from Danny Barrasso at Hilton. We sent 270,000 subscribers to Danny’s offer. Hilton can obviously handle that kind of volume, but another smaller company might have a problem. In addition to test booking and updating consumers & travel companies about any potential pot-holes through the booking process, we need to think in advance about how many subscribers we can tell about an offer at any given time.
A final note about last-minute vs. advance booking. There seems to be a general perception in the UK that all 'deals' are last minute. The reality is that most travel deals that Travelzoo publish are for travel many months later. The airlines call this ‘base-loading’, i.e. they build a base of business 5 months out rather than discounting at the last minute. In this week's Top 20 we recommended this deal from The Holiday Place, which is available through June http://uk.holidays.travelzoo.com/international/727106 and this Jetline deal, is available on 24 June only http://uk.cruises.travelzoo.com/caribbean-cruises/727107.
About 13% of Travelzoo's UK subscribers are interested in last minute deals, the rest want to book in advance. The main reason for not taking more is that people have commitments such as jobs, kids in school etc. which prevents them from taking a last minute deal.
Let me know if I can provide any more information.
Happy Travels,
Joel