buy.at wins Travolution Award • Best affiliate marketing programme for LateRooms

buy.at wins Travolution Award
• Best affiliate marketing programme for LateRooms

buy.at, the UK’s largest independent affiliate network, has been recognised for its expertise in affiliate marketing for the travel sector. The network was awarded ‘Best Use of Affiliate Advertising’ for its work with LateRooms at a ceremony in London hosted by Travolution magazine.

LateRooms, the hotel industry's late availability database providing over 500,000 hotel deals and discount hotels across the UK and Worldwide, asked buy.at to increase online bookings from people searching for hotels for business or pleasure. buy.at worked with LateRooms to extend its in-house programme to target affiliates with incentive, affinity and general shopping sites resulting in almost £2million of sales for LateRooms.

Duncan Barraclough, Affiliate Marketing Manager at LateRooms, commented, ‘buy.at’s proactive account management and bespoke technology solutions have been important. We’ve seen strong incremental from buy.at, helping us to achieve our aggressive sales targets.’

Collecting the trophy, Kevin Cornils, CEO of buy.at, added, ‘We worked with LateRooms to deliver specific requirements for the affiliates, which made it a site they were keen to promote. We also integrated LateRooms’ comprehensive tracking system with our management technology to ensure that all the affiliates, on and offline, are confident of receiving returns for their increasing efforts to promote LateRooms. The Travolution award is a fantastic recognition of the good work of the team at buy.at and the affiliates on our network combined with the strength of the LateRooms offer.’

The Travolution Awards judging panel summed up, ‘In a difficult category to judge, Buy.at demonstrated clear financial gain and built clear and engaging creative across the affiliate network.’

LateRooms developed a range of engaging creative, including offers for seasonal promotions and special deals, and html email creative specifically for affiliates to send to their user bases. This helped LateRooms to increase reach at times when their partner hotels were seeking higher occupancies.

The developmental approach continues into 2007, and buy.at has recently developed user friendly product feeds for the programme and a new pre-booking dual tracking. Through a consultation meeting with buy.at, one of the top PPC affiliates in the industry has also now offered to design, produce and promote a site exclusively around the brand.

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About LateRooms, www.LateRooms.com
LateRooms is the UK’s leading online accommodation site offering late availability deals in over 14,000 properties worldwide, ranging from Bed and Breakfasts to five star luxury hotels. LateRooms offers customers a saving of up to 70 per cent off the normal room rate for a variety of independent and branded hotels. Customers can book by phone or online 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. LateRooms specialises in last minute bookings but guests can book up to six months in advance.
About the Travolution Awards
The Travolution Awards have been established to reward excellence in online travel.
Travolution is a new venture from the Travel Weekly Group, aimed at the online travel market. Covering the traditional travel market plus the new breed of online players, Travolution will provide the essential information for anyone in, or running an online travel business.
Travolution is
• a magazine, encapsulating senior level debate, features and analysis
• a weekly e-news service
• a website providing key online service including webcasts, and in 2006 affiliate tracker, market research reports and digital edition
• a research and events programme featuring seminars targeted at senior decision makers and forums for the online community to share best practice for 2006.
• An executive board, comprising senior figures from the online travel market, to help shape Travolution’s future, and ensure the brand is representing and serving the community.
About buy.at
Established in 2002, buy.at is the UK’s largest independent affiliate marketing network. buy.at drives online sales growth for 200 of the biggest brands across all sectors through its leading network of 6,000 good quality affiliates, supported by industry leading commercial and technical innovations. A pioneer of the open network, buy.at encourages merchants (advertisers) and affiliates (publishers) to communicate directly, to ensure the success of affiliate programmes. Clients include AA, Butlins, Carphone Warehouse, Capital One, Egg, John Lewis, Lloyds TSB, M&S, Powergen, RAC, Sky, T-Mobile and Virgin.

buy.at has experienced 250% growth in turnover year-on-year since 2004. In March 2006, buy.at secured its future growth following a £7.3 million investment from Esprit Capital Partners. Bruce McLaren, renowned for leading Advertising.com as International CEO to a successful sale to AOL Time Warner, was appointed Chairman. Former match.com MD Kevin Cornils was recruited as CEO.

For further information please contact:
Joanna Burton
Head of PR and Marketing
buy.at
t: 020 7299 8380
e: Joanna.Burton@buy.at

Anna Barry
Marketing Executive
buy.at
t: 0191 222 9720
e: Anna.Barry@buy.at