The deal, offered on March 30 through Travelzoo Asia Pacific, offered a 3-night luxury stay at the Banyan Tree Bangkok for $354.

According to Travelzoo, the deal, offered through Travelzoo’s Top 20 newsletter, resulted in 911 vouchers being sold, generating 2,733 incremental room nights and more than $320,000 in sales.

For Banyan Tree, it was the first time the group had embarked on Travelzoo’s Local Deals promotion.

Asked the motivation behind the decision given the thinking that such deals could be detrimental to margins, Rey Ong, Assistant Manager, eBusiness, Banyan Tree Hotels & Resorts, said, “Travelzoo offered an interesting online opportunity to access their database of approximately 3 million subscribers across Asia Pacific. Our intention was to experiment with one hotel within a limited promotion time frame.”  

It is not surprising the group chose to experiment with Banyan Tree Bangkok given this is the city that is facing the most challenges in occupancies among cities in the region.

Asked if the group would be doing more of such deals, he said, “Given that such flash sales serve a particular purpose of generating bookings quickly and within a short time frame, its frequent use causes brand dilution. At this time, we have not considered the continuation of such deals.”

Citing the confidentiality of margins, he added, “Whether it is worthwhile for suppliers to do such deals is situational – it depends on market circumstances and the supplier’s objectives.”

He said the business that was generated were customers who were new to Banyan Tree. “As Banyan Tree Bangkok is a city hotel with a focus on business travellers, we are seeing more male customers.”

Following this first trial, Travelzoo Australia and Singapore General Manager Brad Gurrie said it would be working to grow upon this initial success. “After speaking with a number of these suppliers, we get the sense that there is a willingness to explore opportunities across various destinations in Asia.

“Destinations where we publish Local Deals will vary. It will largely depend on where there is a need in the market to run a tactical promotion. Tactical promotions are run for a variety of reasons which include seasonality, over supply, competition, political or natural events, new properties opening or economic factors. Most markets around the world will at some point in the year experience times where they need to stimulate demand via a tactical promotion.

“Our main focus will be selecting operators that represent high-end luxury experiences in leisure destinations across Asia Pacific. This really leaves a wide range of options as we want to keep surprising and inspiring our audience with new and interesting offers.”

He said that Travelzoo Local Deals leveraged some of the aspects of group buying model “with some notable difference”.

“We are not under pressure to publish a deal a day and we will focus on high-end experiences. Most importantly, we will apply the same rigorous deal selection and approval process to Local Deals to maintain the integrity of our content.”

He said that when it came to purchasing leisure travel, females were consistently the leader in this space and Travelzoo has seen people buy international trips within five minutes of publishing.

“Our commercial model with suppliers for Local Deals is a revenue share model. We will continue to offer our existing media model.”

As for plans to extend Local Deals to other Asian markets, Gurrie said, “Travelzoo has now rolled out Local Deals in all its North American and European markets. Our subscribers respond well to Local Deals, which is consistent with our recent launch in Australia. It does make sense for Travelzoo to roll out it out in the rest of the Asia Pacific markets.”

Travelzoo’s first Local Deal in Australia was a $110 three-course waterfront dinner for two, at the award-winning restaurant in Rose Bay, Catalina. A total of 891 Travelzoo subscribers snapped up the deal about a week after launch.

In the first two weeks since the soft launch, Travelzoo says it has sold more than 2,000 vouchers to its audience and generated just under $400,000 in high-end experiences.