buy.at wins Travolution Award

[David McNiven]

Winner : 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 on 24th April 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 sales from buy.at, helping us to achieve our aggressive 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 pre-booking dual tracking.

Laterooms and buy.at would like to take this opportunity to thank all the affiliates who have promoted the programme since launch and we look forward to working closely with you all in the future.

Regards,