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Last-minute
travel site recruits
isle partners

By Russ Lynch
Star-Bulletin

Executives of a three-year-old Internet travel business were in Hawaii this week signing up hotels, airlines and other providers of travel services to list on the company's Web site, LastMinuteTravel.com.

So far, the site includes Aston Hotels & Resorts and the moderate-priced Ohana Hotels brand recently launched by Outrigger Hotels & Resorts.

There are no other Hawaii hotels listed and no mainland-Hawaii airlines listed, but David S. Miranda, LastMinuteTravel.com Inc. founder, chairman and chief executive, said others have been signed. Just because they may not be listed currently at www.lastminutetravel.com doesn't mean they are not there, he said. It means they don't have a current offer.

Marketing travel services is like "selling ice cubes," Miranda said. Travel opportunities melt away. That's why the instant-transaction capability of the Internet is critical for the industry, he said in an interview at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, where his company hosted a presentation for media and travel industry representatives Wednesday night.

On the Web site hosted by his Atlanta, Ga.-based company, a hotel can list a room that will become available just a day or two in the future and offer it at a low price because the odds that it will sell it are slim. The same applies to airline seats. Airlines will let those last few empty seats go at big discounts before a flight departs so they are not a total loss.

Unlike Cheap Tickets Inc., the Honolulu-based Internet company that takes advantage of those same factors, LastMinuteTravel.com doesn't sell the services itself and doesn't handle the transactions. Instead, it lets the hotels, airlines, rental car companies, events organizers and others list their own services. Miranda said his company makes its money from fees charged for the listings but they are not high. "A hotel can have its offer out there for less than $20 seven days a week, 24 hours a day," he said.

Miranda founded LastMinuteTravel.com in 1997. Before that, his company, DSM, developed travel programs for Southern Living, Golf Digest and Sunset magazines and created Web sites.

Yesterday's Hawaii hotels posting shows Ohana Hotels rooms at $69 to $89 with offers that are good for check-ins starting as soon as Sunday. Bryan Klum, Outrigger director of marketing, said the prices are lower than the officially posted "rack" rates but about the same as a customer would get in an off-season period by just arriving at a front desk or calling the "800" number.

Aston had rooms listed on the site yesterday from $59 to $128. Loren Shim, an Aston marketing executive, said the offers his group posts on the LastMinuteTravel Web site are typically 25-to-30 percent below rack rates.

Miranda said LastMinuteTravel has over 500 travel providers registered with it, including more than 20 airlines and more than 25 hotel companies, and they collectively post over 150,000 offers each hour.