ZUJI spills the beans on how it plans to help holidays happen

Tuesday 17 June, 2008. SYDNEY: Online travel agent ZUJI Australia (www.zuji.com.au) has unveiled an enhanced online travel website with a new choice of great value travel deals and a consumer campaign designed to ‘help holidays happen’ sooner for Aussies in a tough economic climate.

So, with tongue in cheek, and Aussies’ holiday interests at heart, it’s ZUJI to the rescue with a beans-led recovery. After surveying its audience of travellers, and discovering 56% eat baked beans on toast rather than eat takeaway in order to save up some money for a trip, ZUJI has come up with a novel way to help consumers cut grocery bill costs in order to save more money for a holiday. ZUJI has also revealed money can be saved on the total cost of the trip too if booked utilising ZUJI’s new dynamic packaging feature online.

According to ZUJI Australia’s General Manager, Peter Smith, “We realise that finding the money to get out of the office and off on a holiday might be challenging for many people at the moment. The weekly grocery shop is dinting the wallet; education and child care costs are steep; petrol prices have hit all-time peaks; and climbing interest rates are swiftly taking care of any remaining loose change. So, we’ve decided to invest in a range of ways to help Aussies get travelling sooner.”

ZUJI Australia has announced three ways it’s helping to get Aussies out of the house and into a hotel:

(1)     Enter the bean! ZUJI is rolling its sleeves up and taking a practical approach to helping Aussies save for a trip.

Peter Smith said: “We decided to come to the party with 10,000 cans of baked beans available for just 10c a can, to help keep grocery bills as low as they can go. It’s a bit of fun, and we’ll also be launching some supporting communications in the weeks ahead.”

ZUJI will make the beans available from three store-front locations in Sydney & Melbourne, as well as numerous organic and local market stalls during the month ahead (see attached for ZUJI Bean sale locations).

(2)     An enhanced web site, offering package holidays at reduced prices.

The ‘dynamic packaging’ technology ZUJI has introduced now allows travellers to create a package holiday of their own design online. By creating a trip this way, there are substantial cost savings on the total price as compared to booking the hotel and flights separately. Significant savings are available on worldwide destinations.

(3)     More travel deals, to more places, and more hotels.

Everyone knows that the best deals are online and here’s why: ZUJI’s online business model allows it to live on lean in a climate of low travel margins, and it passes the overhead savings back to consumers with very competitive travel prices online for flights, hotels and holidays. With over 400 airlines and almost 40,000 ‘great buy’ hotels on offer, ZUJI is squeezing its suppliers for great deals to inspiring places.

From June, ZUJI is releasing a series of amazing holiday and hotel deals at the beginning of each month which are to popular destinations, and offer great value prices and inclusions which are exclusive to ZUJI and available to be booked at www.zuji.com.au on a 24/7 basis.

Some of the best dynamically packaged stays available (includes flights + hotel stays)*:

a.       5 nights Hong Kong from $1,306 (stay in 4 star hotel) – save $445

b.       5 nights Bangkok from $1,439 (stay in 4 star hotel) – save $442

c.       4 nights Honolulu from $1,847 (stay in 4 star hotel) – save $89

d.       4 nights Auckland from $901 (stay in 4 star hotel) – save $60

Of course, for people who really get a taste for the beans, the following ZUJI travel deals will allow you to sample an English fry-up, or 4th July BBQ in the US and are sure to tempt the taste buds:

e.       5 nights London from $2,660 (stay in 4 star hotel) – save $806

f.        7 nights New York  from $2,772 (stay in 3 star hotel) – save $1263

*Prices quoted for above deals are ex- Sydney and per person. Deals are subject to limited availability and subject to confirmation at time of enquiry and must be booked online using the ZUJI ‘dynamic packaging’ tool under the ‘Holidays’ tab on www.zuji.com.au.  

Associated with the ZUJI Beans ‘helping holidays happen’ approach, ZUJI will also unveil a communications campaign in June/ July with more ways for people to join in the beanie fun such as:

A ‘Beans on Tour’ photo competition, encouraging world travellers to submit happy snaps of activities and locations where the beans have tagged along to cut costs along the way.
A beany-blog, which appeals to the online user base of members, and travel voucher prizes will be awarded for the most creative blog renderings.
Advertising will support the effort to promote the beans as a way to save for holidays with ZUJI.
Streaming across emerging mediums such as myspace and facebook to reach both the Y generation and family online buyers
For something a bit different- limited edition product components of the campaign will also be sold on ebay.

About ZUJI

In 2005, 2006 and again in 2007, ZUJI® was recognized as Asia Pacific’s ‘Best Online Travel Agent’, as awarded by TTG travel magazines in Asia Pacific. ZUJI was also awarded as the ‘Best Online Travel Agency’ in 2007 by the TravelWeekly (Asia) Industry Awards. In March 2008, Condé Nast Traveler acknowledged ZUJI.com as the ‘winner’ when it comes to booking flights in Asia.

ZUJI gives travellers in Asia Pacific online access to real-time travel bookings for thousands of hotels and hundreds of airlines, as well as bringing cruises, car hire, attraction bookings, package tours and other inspirational travel offers, products and tools online.

ZUJI has teams and/or travel websites in Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Australia, Korea (‘Nextour’), New Zealand (‘Travelocity New Zealand’), and India (‘Travelocity India’), as well as many ‘Travel Partner Network’ sites throughout Asia Pacific.

ZUJI is owned by Travelocity®, an international leader in online travel. Travelocity books more than $10 billion per year in travel with over $1 billion in revenue. Travelocity is owned by Sabre Holdings Corporation, a world leader in travel commerce.