Lastminute.com and Rough Guides tie-up offers brands ‘smarter targeting’

Third-parties able to build bespoke campaigns to engage travellers at ‘every stage of the travel journey’ Continue reading →

OTA lastminute.com and travel publisher Rough Guides are to offer brands marketing reach to their combined 46 million-strong travel audience.

The partners said the new partnership will enable smarter, more accurate targeting for brands looking to tap into their lucrative users.

The tie-up includes the lastminute.com network of travel websites across Europe including Rumbo and Bravofly.

Third-party brands will be able to use the combined offer to build bespoke campaigns to engage travellers at every stage of the travel journey, said lastminute.com.

As part of the partnership, lastminute.com group will use search and booking data to target its customers on site with the most relevant travel guides.

Rough Guides’ content will sit on dedicated microsites on lastminute.com group’s sites.

Alessandra Di Lorenzo, chief commercial officer – media and partnerships at lastminute.com group, said:

“We want to help advertisers engage travellers with relevant content from the research and inspiration phase, right through to booking and beyond – and this partnership allows us to do just that.

“It is part of our strategy to develop more rich, curated marketing solutions that go beyond the banner.

“And Rough Guides is a perfect partner for us – its iconic travel content will complement our own content creation capabilities, which we’ve been working hard to develop since acquiring WAYN – the world’s largest social travel network – last year.”

René Frey, chief executive of Rough Guides, added: “This is a really exciting partnership for us.

“Not only will it help our brand partners to reach a bigger travel audience, it will also allow us to engage with consumers in a travel environment and later in the booking funnel, when they’ll have a higher propensity to purchase our product.

“After all, when is there a better time to offer someone a travel guide than when they’re booking their flight to that destination?”

Brands advertising through the partnership will be able to engage with lastminute.com group’s 43 million unique monthly users, alongside the three million visitors to Rough Guides’ site each month.

Frey added: “With 35 years of inspiring travellers under our belt, our priority is to keep our original audience coming back while evolving the Rough Guides brand to draw in a younger crowd.

“With its sizeable reach and young, spontaneous audience, lastminute.com group is the obvious OTA for us to partner with.”