Travel Ticker website from Hotwire focuses on bargains

The unemployment rate in California is up to a five-year high, and that tells you nothing good about the economy in the Golden State or anywhere else.

So the timing for Travel Ticker (www.travel-ticker.com), a new bargain website from the Hotwire people, probably couldn’t be better. It makes its debut today.

“We love to read about deals so we wanted to have something that was enjoyable to read and peruse and would inspire travel among enthusiasts,” said Barbara Messing, vice president of Travel Ticker.

Unlike some sites that suggest bargains that aren’t bargains for West Coasters, Travel Ticker uses “geo-targeting,” meaning you’ll see bargains appropriate to where you live.

“We know L.A. people are different and they shop differently, so someone in L.A. … may be looking at Cabo San Lucas or the Riviera Maya [in Mexico] or would consider going to Mammoth or Tahoe,” Messing said.

In my mind, the only hitch with this model, which has been in the works for a couple of years, is that the deals are the result of paid relationships with vendors of travel products. But Messing said that a sort of self-policing would ensure that the deals really are deals.

“The team are a bunch of travel enthusiasts who look at deals and vet them and compare to other things out there,” she said. “If we don’t have great deals, we’re not going to keep our customers.”

Will you be among them?

— Catharine Hamm, Los Angeles Times travel editor

[Image: Travel Ticker]

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This entry was posted on Monday, July 21, 2008 at 12:01 am by Catharine Hamm and is filed under Business Travel, California, California's Central Coast, Caribbean, Deals, East Coast, Eastern Canada, Eco-Travel, Europe, Fall, Family & Kids, Festival, Gay, Global, Golf, Gourmet, Great Britain, Hawaii, Honeymoon, Spa & Romance, Islands & Beaches, Lake Tahoe & Eastern Sierra, Las Vegas, Last Minute, Latin America & Caribbean, Los Angeles, Luxury Travel, Mexico, Midwestern States, Monterey Peninsula, Napa Valley, National Parks, New Mexico, News, Tips & Advice, Northern California, Orange County, Pacific Northwest, Palm Springs, Polar Regions, Rocky Mountain States, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, Sierra Nevada, Southern States, Summer, Tours & Cruises, Weekend Getaways, Western Canada. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.