A recent story in The Wall Street Journal explored how the worlds of media and e-commerce are merging, giving consumers a more interactive, and even social, online shopping experience while also providing relevant and targeted editorial content.
Gilt.com was mentioned in the story as an example of the new model, and while WSJ described it as a “fashion ‘flash sale’ shopping site,” from my perspective as a travel PR pro, Gilt has been a huge game-changer in the industry with their new “Jetsetter” hotel flash sale offshoot.
With Jetsetter, Gilt can simultaneously market and sell guest rooms, promising hotels huge revenues in the process. They also provide the content that the WSJ story describes, listing local attractions and giving mostly positive hotel reviews with a “Jetsetter Verified” seal of approval, the type of third-party endorsement that my clients crave. In fact, a few clients who used to say “get us into Travel + Leisure” are now saying “get us on Jetsetter.”
What will be interesting to watch, is if, and how, Jetsetter and similar travel flash sale sites that have sprung up in its wake will shape e-commerce for hotels and the travel industry going forward.
We’ve already heard stories of how Gilt has changed some clothing company’s production models. While Gilt once had to ask (read: beg) designers for their unsold merchandise, now designers may find it more profitable to create special lines specifically for the website, since Gilt can move large orders of merchandise more quickly than many brick-and-mortar stores.
For hotels: how will their revenue management models adapt to this new form of e-commerce, where big volume and long-term discounts are key?
There’s also the question of value. If I buy a $100 shirt in the store and see it on Gilt for 70% off the next day, I feel a little betrayed by the designer. In the same vein, if a certain designer is on Gilt every two weeks, selling their duds at huge discounts, why would I ever pay retail? How much is that skirt really worth?
Hotel guests will likely be asking the same questions and weighing their options with online room purchases, and the industry should be prepared for potential criticism. For the luxury names that Jetsetter promises, there is brand reputation at stake.
