At a time when last-minute booking sites were taking all the attention, another option for unsold hotel inventory was quietly asserting a place in the accommodation sector.
Corporate trade — in which companies use unsold stock to pay for media, marketing and other services — is now a mature industry in Australia, according to the Australian managing director of Active International Cameron Swan.
Active has established operations in 15 countries over the past 32 years and has had a presence in Australia since 1994. The company says it helps businesses generate additional value from excess stock and makes their media investment work harder.
Active’s services provide digital media campaigns that can involve custom content on travel booking sites, using retargeting technology to display advertisements after a visitor has left a hotel website or investment in key search terms.
“We are negotiating and paying for the media through a trading system,” Swan said. “We can either partner with a client’s existing agency to top up their budgets, or start the process from scratch.”
The company says in one instance, a Las Vegas hotel was able to increase first-time phone enquiries by 20% through a media trading arrangement that offered an alternative to discounting.
