TELETEXT has launched a holiday Web site as part of its strategy to start selling travel across all forms of new media.
The new site currently displays 20% of the content that appears on Teletext’s television service, but the company plans to put the rest up within the next month.
It is already working on digital terrestrial, digital satellite and digital cable TV services is and looking at launching its services on mobile telephones and palmtop devices in the future.
Commercial director Lawrence Lawson said:”What we are doing is hedging our bets and putting Teletext on all of them.
“The aim is to provide Teletext everywhere. Wherever people are, they will be able to access Teletext’s information services and buy holidays. The Web is a spoke in the wheel, but it’s an important one for us.”
Lawson said that for the present, travel advertisers would not be charged extra for their product being displayed through the new media channels.
He claimed the company would only be able to justify price hikes if it started selling a lot more holidays on advertisers’ behalf.
At present, one in 10 of all holidays sold in the UK is via Teletext. However, Lawson hopes to increase this to one in five holidays within five years.
Lawson claims that a total of 3.5m bookings have been made via Teletext over the past year and 98% of customers have said they would be willing to use the service again. Teletext’s television service features 4,000 pages of advertising.
The company has just kicked off a £3m advertising campaign to promote its new Web site on television, radio and posters. It is due to run for six weeks.
Teletext’s site can be found at www.teletext.co.uk.