Posted at 10:45 a.m., Tuesday, June 5, 2001
Cheap Tickets will counter rival with Florida call center
Advertiser Staff
Cheap Tickets Inc. said today it will open a call center with 100 employees in Tampa, Fla., to add a base on the East Coast for handling its expanding business.
The Honolulu-based seller of discount leisure travel products said the new call center will start operation next month and could eventually employ as many as 400 workers.
Cheap Tickets has call centers in Honolulu, Los Angeles, Lakeport, Calif., and Colorado Springs, Colo.
The announcement comes a day after Orbitz LLC, an Internet travel company owned by the five biggest U.S. airlines, said it more than doubled daily airline, hotel and rental-car sales through its Web site after ending a test and opening to the public Saturday.
Orbitz said bookings reached $500,000, up from $200,000 the previous day, when it ended a three-month test with limited access. Orbitz, which gets fees from companies offering travel services through its site, said it expected to handle $600,000 to $1 million in sales today. The U.S. Justice Department is conducting an antitrust review of the company, and 22 state attorneys general have raised antitrust concerns.
"We view them as a competitor," said Sam E. Galeotos, president and chief executive officer of Cheap Tickets Inc. He said Orbitz is limited because it only sells via the Internet, whereas Cheap Tickets has found many customers still prefer to confirm ticket sales over the telephone.
"Telephone sales capability remains a critical distribution channel for Cheap Tickets because we know from third-party research that more than 60 percent of consumers still prefer to purchase their travel products over the phone, even if they do shop for the best deals online," Galeotos said.
Cheap Tickets' call centers handle, on average, more than 22,000 calls per day through its 24-hour reservation line, the company said. Its Web site, www.cheaptickets.com, averages more than 91,000 visits per day, and growing by the day, the company said.
With total gross bookings of $665.5 million in 2000, call centers and other sources accounted for $410.1 million, or 62 percent of total bookings, with the significant majority coming through the call centers, the company said.
Cheap Tickets reported in April that its first-quarter profit fell 49 percent. Net income fell to $1.18 million, or 5 cents a share, from $2.31 million, or 10 cents, a year earlier. Revenue rose 17 percent to $24.9 million from $21.2 million.
In December Cheap Tickets hired the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency to help promote its brand and attract more customers to its Internet site, call centers and stores. The company is trying to compete better against larger online travel services, such as Expedia Inc. and Travelocity.com Inc.
