Media Release
Open Letter
20th September 2005
Graham Turner
20 September 2005
Managing Director
Flight Centre
157 Anne Street
BRISBANE QLD 4000
Dear Graham,
Your newspaper advertisements, Flightcentre.com.au – cheaper than webjet.com.au by AT LEAST $11.85 per booking
It would be remiss of me not to write and thank you for promoting webjet.com.au (Australia’s number 1# Hitwise site in the June Quarter) in your national press advertising last weekend. The campaign must have been amazingly effective since, as I wrote this on Monday afternoon, Fright Centre (sorry) Flightcentre.com.au was “temporarily unable to offer our domestic flight booking online, due to an unprecedented number of people visiting the website”.
That is most unfortunate because of course visitors to the site would have had to either:
• go to a Flight Centre shop to book
• or book by telephone
and in either case they would then according to your ads presumably have had to pay a minimum fee of $10.00 GST per domestic sector to complete the transaction.
Of course, they probably decided to visit webjet.com.au, the simplest and quickest way to book any travel deal.
What an amazing twist!
In addition to thanking you for your marketing assistance, we would like to say how sorry we are that:
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• your customers can’t book international flights with you online.
• you don’t have a credit card vault to assist your customers with multiple card management.
• our unique domestic and international, compare, search and book matrix sets such high standards for our competitors to match.
• last month approximately 50,000 travellers booked with Webjet.
However, on a more positive note, we see that your recently rejuvenated Flight Captain’s picture continues to smile happily from your ads, putting a brave face to the stress and turmoil apparently going on behind him.
Please keep up the good work on our behalf, because it’s very much in the interests of all travellers, Australia wide, to be aware of the superb range and quality of services uniquely offered by webjet.com.au.
For a small fee of $11.85, our customers tell us, the value is quite amazing.