DALLAS—Airline employee travel agency ID90 Travel is targeting more than 2.5 million airline employees who take about 10 million trips per year to build hotel revenue growth during off-peak periods. Since airline employees typically fly for free when seats are available, they can offset the reduction in business travel by helping hotels fill rooms with customers at off-peak times.
Mike Stacy, CEO of ID90 Travel, said, “At a time when hotels are desperate to fill rooms vacated by business travelers, airline employees are more focused than ever on using their travel benefits to visit destinations where their bookings can make a huge difference for hoteliers. This includes last-minute bookings, booking stays when occupancy is lowest (such as Sunday and Monday nights), booking in shorter windows, and booking cost-effectively via mobile device. The airline employees who use our online tools to book hotels worldwide are a pre-qualified, profitable customer base which can provide hoteliers with tremendous upside—and the time to tap them is now.”
According to ID90 Travel, the airline employee travelers who book lodging each year:
- Stay an average of 2.1 nights and spend about $180.00 per night.
- Book in short windows—73 percent book within five days of check-in and 43 percent book the same day.
- Book on mobile devices (more than 70 percent)
- Favor travel to cities that have been hit hardest by the fall-off in business travel including Las Vegas, New York, Houston, and Chicago.
Jeff Jackson, general partner at Thayer Ventures and former CFO at Sabre Holdings, said, “There is huge potential for hotels to sell effectively to the millions of airline travelers who journey on non-revenue tickets each year, and ID90 Travel has opened a gateway to make it possible. The company’s disruptive online tools enable hotels to market the inventory more quickly and cost-effectively than any other online marketplace, to create not just happy airline employee travelers—but profitable hotel transactions as well. This is an area of tremendous potential growth for the company, and for hoteliers around the world.”
ID90 Travel’s hotel platform allows aviation and travel industry employees (and their families and friends) to search and book travel at industry rates. The booking engine technology connects to a dozen different channels to find good rates.
