WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. -- EuroVacations launched two Web sites, one for
consumers and one for travel agents, both offering customized
itinerary planning, hundreds of suggested European trips and
booking capabilities.
The agent site, www.eurovacations.to, enables retailers to earn 12%
commission on everything except rail passes and rail products,
which pay 10%.
Agents can book entire vacations on EuroVacations.to, or single
trip components.
The consumer site, www.eurovacations.com, offers products to
people who register as members.
On both sites, a trip planner named Amedeo guides visitors
through the itinerary-building process.
Joe Buhler, executive vice president of business development for
EuroVacations.com, the parent company, said he has been stressing
to agents that the EuroVacations retailer site is their tool, not
their competitor.
"There is no other site that I know of where you can plan any
element of an FIT -- with countless choices and customization --
and get a 12% commission," he said.
The site allows users to store itineraries as they are building
them into a "cyber suitcase," and users can e-mail itineraries to
friends and clients for their perusal.
Buhler said he was trying to get agencies or consortiums such as
Vacation.com and Carlson to link to EuroVacations.to from their
home pages.
"I read with great interest a recent article in Travel Weekly
that followed an agent who had to go to about 12 Web sites to find
out what she needed," he said, referring to "Diary of a Web User," an account of an agent's
Web use.
"The point of EuroVacations is that all the information an agent
is seeking is on one site -- restaurant recommendations, maps,
travel tips, the works."
Buhler touted the Web sites' emphasis on product
availability.
"We don't display fares for anything -- car, hotel, air --
unless the rate and inventory are actually available," he said.
"We are working against the paradigm of Expedia and Travelocity.
On EuroVacations.com, you don't immediately put in your dates of
travel on our site; you spend time browsing and figuring out where
you want to go and what you want to do."
During the testing stage, the average user spent 10 minutes on
the sites, Buhler added.
He acknowledged that many choices of itineraries and customized
planning was intimidating, so a "tutorial program" will soon be
placed on the EuroVacations home pages.
In the meantime, EuroVacations.com is spending $12 million on
consumer and trade advertising from now through the end of the
year.
A week before EuroVacations.com went live on July 5, the firm
began an advertising schedule in USA Today, the New York Times, the
Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times.
After Labor Day, Buhler said the company will air commercials on
several national cable networks, such as CNN, the Discovery
Channel, A&E and Home & Garden.
Buhler declined to reveal how much money EuroVacations.com was
spending to promote specifically to the trade.
The parent company of the sites, EuroVacations.com, is majority
owned by Rail Europe, based here. A minority shareholder, the
Portland, Ore.-based Avanti, contributes to the operations and
components of the sites.