• Official partnership from 27 November 2012
• Use of PAYBACK as multichannel marketing platform
• Goals: new-customer acquisition and greater customer loyalty
• Handy for customers: PAYBACK is integrated into expedia.de booking process Frankfurt, Munich, 15 November 2012 – More and more Germans are booking their holidays online. To increase customer benefits, expedia.de is entering into an exclusive partnership with PAYBACK. From 27 November 2012, customers will be able to collect valuable points from the world’s leading online travel agent. For every two euros spent booking hotels, package tours or Click&Mix offers, they will receive one point. And even more points will be up for grabs to mark the start of the partnership. Before Christmas and crucially in January, when bookings are traditionally high, more than 20 million PAYBACK customers can therefore take advantage of early-bird discounts while topping up their points accounts at <link www.expedia.de>www.expedia.de</link> – all they need to do is enter their PAYBACK customer number at the end of the booking process. “This exclusive cooperation is entirely in keeping with our core brand promise ‘People shaped travel’ and will create added value for all sides. Our customers collect points and we, as a company, will gain a unique competitive advantage on the market in many respects”, says Andreas Nau, Managing Director of expedia.de. “By using PAYBACK as a marketing platform, we expect to see an increase in new-customer business and even greater customer loyalty. In future, customers will make twice the savings – thanks to our attractive offers and the many opportunities and partners that take part in PAYBACK. Our hotel, flight and package tour partners will also benefit from a wide variety of new promotional opportunities”, explains Nau. “PAYBACK’s online portfolio now includes more than 500 shops with famous brands such as eBay, Otto, Amazon and Zalando. expedia.de is yet another extremely attractive and trustworthy partner for us. It strengthens our presence in the travel industry, which has always been highly regarded by consumers”, says Bernhard Brugger, CEO Central Europe at PAYBACK GmbH. “The fact that PAYBACK is now integrated directly into the booking process at expedia.de is particularly handy for customers.” PAYBACK has wider coverage than almost any other company in Germany. Over 20 million consumers actively use the programme and its offers. The consumer expenditure of these customers is up to 27 percent higher than that of non-PAYBACK members.
Some 36,000 partner-company PoS, around 150 million print mailings and 350 million coupon e-mails distributed every year are digitally supported by the online sales platform payback.de featuring over 500 online shops, the PAYBACK Deals platform and an extremely successful app which has already been downloaded 800,000 times. In 2011, PAYBACK customers in Germany alone benefited from over one billion customized printed coupons and 2.4 billion digital coupons. In the field of social media, PAYBACK is one of the strongest companies in Germany, with 600,000 Facebook fans. With a portfolio of over 150,000 hotels and over 300 airlines, Expedia is the world’s leading online travel portal. As well as this impressive selection, expedia.de offers its customers special filter options to help them find the trip best suited to their individual requirements. Last year, expedia.de customers saved an average of more than EUR 100 per booking by individually combining flights and hotel with “Click& Mix”. For press images in high-res please click <link www.payback.net/en/press/images/payback-themes/>here</link>.