The company plans to divert its traditional spend, investing the vast majority of its budget online, and has hired DS-J to handle its first digital CRM campaign.
Travelodge has been running a heavyweight campaign, promoting its £26 a night room rate, available only online. Web bookings represent 80% of the chain's total.
According to Nielsen Media Research, Travelodge spends more than £3.1m a year on advertising in the UK. Press activity accounts for £1.9m, compared with £300,000 for online. The rest is spent on TV, radio and outdoor work.
'We want to lead the industry in our use of e-marketing,' said Stephen Welham, interactive marketing manager at Travelodge.
The agency's initial brief is to create an email campaign targeting both existing and prospective Travelodge customers. This will comprise an e-bulletin, which will promote the chain's range of new hotels through discounts and special offers.
The strategy of driving customers to make bookings on the web reflects a wider trend in the hotel industry. Last week, Hilton announced that it expects online bookings to total £1.2bn this year, compared with £373m in 2001. Online sales now account for 17.2% of business, compared with 9.1% in 2002.
Last year, Travelodge appointed Doner Cardwell Hawkins to handle its relaunch and drive traffic to its website.
According to the IPA's Bellwether report last month, 15% of companies spend more than 15% of their marketing budget online. It also found the proportion of companies allocating less than 1% of their marketing spend online dropped from 75% to 50% over the previous year.
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