IMMEDIATE RELEASEMarch 10, 2003

Online room-booking for NYC-getaways

Getaway lodgings in the Berkshires, Catskills and mid-Hudson Valley lie close to one of the world's major centers of Internet activity, the New York Metropolitan area. But many of those lodgings have a hard time exploiting the connection. Only the largest chain hotels are accessible via the Internet through major online room-booking systems such as Expedia and Travelocity. Many of the smaller hotels have difficulty keeping track of rooms they allocate to someone else to sell, and dislike having someone else come between them and their customers.

This summer, non-chain NYC-getaway lodgings can receive room bookings through a system designed specially around their needs. The system is being built into a family of four web sites: www.nycgetaways.com and three supporting getaway sites, getawaytheberkshires, getawaythehudson, and getawaythecatskills.com. Together the four sites receive 15,000 visitors a month, three-quarters of them from the Tri-State area. That traffic is expected to double by mid summer.

Like other vendors, the getaway sites charge commission on room bookings. But instead of using e-commerce software to make and record bookings, the getaway sites ask visitors to register their bookings. In return for recording their queries and bookings, visitors are offered a $50 savings on a second getaway at their choice of "sponsors." As a result, the getaway sites don't need to come between the customer and lodging, in fact they encourage visitors to phone a lodging and visit its web site. This is crucial to smaller lodgings that compete with one another mainly through how they present themselves on their web pages.

Unlike larger lodgings with automated booking systems, smaller lodgings do not necessarily like having someone else make bookings for them. They often prefer speaking directly to potential customers. They also prefer not having to thread their way through secure online systems to gather credit card information. With the "getaway" site system they can collect credit card information over the phone as part of taking a booking.

For all three regions, the getaway sites list nearly 200 lodgings, accounting for almost 10,000 rooms. Lodgings are made accessible to visitors through one-line listings gathered on five pages and grouped by town or distance from the City. Each one-line listing has a link to a web page with full contact information, including a link to the lodging's web site. A great deal of information lies comfortably concealed beneath a seemingly very simple interface.

The $50-saving on additional getaways comes primarily from services the getaway sites make available to sponsors, who translate the value of those services into discounts on getaways that the getaway sites can then offer visitors in return for recording their bookings. Among those services are waiving all commission on sponsors' bookings, featuring sponsors at no charge on home and editorial pages, and bringing sponsors additional bookings they can call in off-peak. The 20% of participating lodgings invited to become sponsors will in most cases be the larger and more popular lodgings in each region.

The getaway series of web guides has been growing since 1994. Getawaythehudson.com, the oldest and still a model for the other two, sketches very quickly in text and pictures the region's major towns and what each one has to offer visiting city dwellers. Nycgetaways.com, portal for the whole family, also acts as a supersite providing visitors with listings of all online resources for all NYC-getaway regions, including the Hamptons and the Poconos, making it the primary online guide for New Yorkers to getting away. Together the four sites provide visitors with an environment carrying them securely all the way from the Internet's search engines to lodgings' own web sites and booking by phone.

Shaun Johnston, publisher of the getaway family of regional guides, lives between New Paltz and Kingston in the mid-Hudson Valley. Asha and Bipin Bhavsar of Shangri-La, a sponsor in the Catskills, can be reached at 845-254-6000. Steele Andrews, past president of the Columbia County Lodging Association and owner of The Celerohn, a participating lodging in the Berkshires, can be reached at 518-325-3000.